State guide
South Carolina Mitigation Banks & Credits
South Carolina has 90 open-market mitigation banks and 1 in-lieu fee site offering wetland, stream and species credits, and recorded 1,479 credit sales — credit withdrawals in the federal ledger — over 2016–2025. This page mirrors the federal USACE RIBITS registry: live availability by credit class and watershed, the banks serving South Carolina, and how the state's permitting program relates to the federal one.
South Carolina ranks #9 of 50 states by credit sales recorded in the RIBITS ledger over 2016–2025 — 1,479 sales across 33 sellers. All states ranked
Figures mirrored from USACE RIBITS · synced
South Carolina mitigation bank map
South Carolina Stream Mitigation Credits
30 stream banks have credits available now in South Carolina. Banks are sorted by available quantity.
Other Stream Credits
Which of these banks can serve your site? Approved service area decides eligibility, so resolve a location before you shortlist.
Find eligible banksSouth Carolina Wetland Mitigation Credits
35 wetland banks have credits available now in South Carolina. Banks are sorted by available quantity. The listings below are grouped as Freshwater Credits, Tidal Estuarine Credits and Upland Buffer Credits.
Freshwater Credits
2 more wetland banks are sold out or closed in South Carolina and are not listed here.
Tidal Estuarine Credits
Upland Buffer Credits
South Carolina Species Mitigation Credits
Conservation-bank credits in South Carolina are issued against a specific listed species or habitat. The curated headings below make the market browsable without changing the underlying RIBITS classifications or implying that separately issued credits are interchangeable.
Carolina Heelsplitter Credits
The Carolina heelsplitter is a freshwater mussel found in a limited number of streams in North and South Carolina. Its dark elongated shell is moderately inflated and marked by concentric growth lines.
Mitigation banks pending approval in South Carolina
31 mitigation banks have applied for approval to sell credits in South Carolina and are still under review. Pending means the reviewing agency has not approved them yet, so they cannot sell credits here today. They are listed because they are the supply that could enter this market next. No credit quantity is shown for a bank that cannot sell.
In-lieu fee programs serving South Carolina
1 approved in-lieu fee program serves South Carolina but holds no credits here right now, so mitigation banks are the only credit source in the state today.
2 further in-lieu fee programs are pending approval in South Carolina and cannot sell credits yet.
1 in-lieu fee program on record for South Carolina is withdrawn or terminated and is not listed.
Active watersheds in South Carolina
The HUC-6 watersheds where South Carolina banks hold offerings, by number of offerings.
Three South Carolina watersheds have an in-depth market report. Savannah River (Augusta, Savannah), Santee (Columbia, Charlotte) and Lower Pee Dee (Florence, Myrtle Beach) — each with its national rank, ten-year sales and per-class credit runway.
See the watershed reportsWhat mitigation credits cost in South Carolina
There is no published price for a mitigation bank credit in South Carolina, or anywhere else. Credits change hands in private bilateral deals with no disclosure requirement, and the federal registry has no price field — so any single “average price per credit” you find has been modeled, not measured. What can be documented is individual purchases, one public record at a time. That is what we do, state by state; South Carolina is not one we hold a verified transaction for yet. Published in-lieu fee rates
South Carolina mitigation banking regulation
South Carolina has no standalone state permitting program for inland wetlands or streams. Its role in a freshwater impact is the §401 water quality certification appended to the Corps' §404 permit — one that exists only because a federal application does. Three districts permit here: Charleston across most of the state, with Savannah and Wilmington reaching in across the Georgia and North Carolina lines. The state's one genuine permitting authority is narrow: under the Coastal Tidelands and Wetlands Act it alone may permit alteration within the "critical area" of the eight coastal counties, covering tidelands, coastal waters and the beach-dune system, not the inland wetlands most bank service areas are drawn around. Inside it an applicant needs two independent mitigation approvals — the Corps' and the state's own — which can carry different terms and timelines.
Charleston District sizes compensatory mitigation with the Charleston Method, behind nearly all the state's credit supply in the Unit column above. It starts from the area affected for wetlands and the length affected for streams, then moves that base up or down through named adjustment factors — the resource lost, the site's condition, the durability of the fix, the net improvement expected — so a credit is an adjusted acre or an adjusted foot rather than an abstract functional unit. The judgment at the end is explicitly discretionary, not a scored total.
Nothing at state level has replaced the jurisdiction Sackett v. EPA narrowed in 2023. A 2012 bill that would have created a state permit for isolated wetlands never passed; the legislature enacted a study task force instead. The response has come from individual municipalities and counties adopting local buffer ordinances, so whether an isolated wetland is regulated at all now depends on the local government. This page tracks only federally registered credits.
Permits in South Carolina are issued by the Corps’ Charleston, Savannah and Wilmington districts, all in the South Atlantic Division. See our division overview for new-bank approval timelines, and recent permit and bank applications.
South Carolina mitigation banking — common questions
How much does wetland mitigation cost in South Carolina?
We do not publish a price for a South Carolina credit, and nobody else can honestly publish one either: credits are sold in private bilateral deals with no disclosure requirement, and the federal registry has no price field. What we hold is no verified South Carolina transaction on record yet — the counts are on this page and the records themselves are not published. What actually moves a credit's price — scarcity in the specific service area that covers your site, the credit class, the unit it is measured in and whether credits are already released — is set out on the credit-cost pillar.
Who issues wetland permits in South Carolina?
In South Carolina, wetland and stream impacts are permitted through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Charleston, Savannah, Wilmington Districts. A mitigation bank's credits offset the impact once a permit requires compensation; being in the same state as a bank is not enough — the bank's approved service area must cover your site.
How many mitigation banks are in South Carolina?
We track 102 mitigation and conservation banks and in-lieu fee sites on record for South Carolina, of which 59 are approved. 90 are open-market banks and 1 are in-lieu fee sites whose credits can be bought; the rest are single-client captive banks excluded from the supply figures on this page.
Read the South Carolina watershed reports
Three South Carolina watersheds have a free market report on this site — national rank, ten-year sales and per-class credit runway. Any other US watershed can be ordered as a full analysis.
About the data on this page
Bank details, status and credit balances are mirrored from the USACE RIBITS registry, the federal public record for mitigation banks. Single-client banks are excluded from supply figures. What we call a “credit sale” is a credit withdrawal — the entry written in the federal credit ledger when credits are committed to a permit. At commercial banks a withdrawal generally represents a sale; at a single-client bank it offsets the sponsor’s own project. The figures count ledger transactions, not distinct purchases — one purchase may produce several withdrawals — and we count entries rather than credits moved, because credit classes are different units and cannot be added together. Sales are counted from the withdrawals in RIBITS’s own credit ledger over the last 10 complete years. They are counts of transactions, never sums of credits, for the same reason totals are kept per class. Each bar in a sales chart counts the credit sales recorded in that calendar year — withdrawals from the federal ledger, not quantities of credits. The final bar is the year in progress and is shown in a different color. No bars means no sales in those years.
RIBITS provides credit type and credit classification for each bank listing which we display verbatim. The topic labels and headings you see are ours — we group those names so you can more easily find what you need. For example, five banks selling the same kind of wetland credit may record their classification as “Palustrine Forested”, “PFO - Palustrine Forested”, “Forested Wetland”, “Forested Wetlands” or just “Forested”; we gather all five under one Forested label. Watershed groupings come from each bank’s service area intersected with the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset. We group at the HUC-6 level because it is the scale at which these patterns are legible: a HUC-8 is sub-regional and usually too small, while a HUC-4 is large enough to average away the local dynamics that decide whether credits are available where you need them. Those links are refreshed monthly rather than nightly, because service areas and watershed boundaries don’t change frequently.
Comps are documented purchases, confirmed against the RIBITS ledger where the transaction can be matched.