Concerns about Agricultural Lands There are very few opportunities left within the Puget Sound area to conduct a large scale restoration project of this kind without affecting agricultural land. It is rarer still to identify a property containing a flood control dike that is able to be breached to promote flood control benefits without impacting the surrounding area. Yet, the SHMB offers the opportunity to actively restore natural function to a large parcel of riverside property and conserve it in perpetuity as part of a mitigation bank while creating measurable net benefits to surrounding farmland. The SHMB has been designed specifically to fill an ecological need that has been identified by local scientists, academics, government agencies, and regional planning and technical groups to restore off-channel and side channel habitat in the lower Skykomish River basin. The idea is derived primarily from Snohomish County’s Department of Surface Water Management “Ascent 21 Proposal,” which identified this particular site for acquisition and partial removal of the perimeter flood control dike in order to promote flood control benefits to farmland on the opposite bank of the Skykomish River within the Tualaco Valley. Throughout the design and permit review processes, Skykomish Habitat, LLC worked with local farmers and Snohomish County staff to quantify and substantiate the benefits to neighboring farms that will result from the construction of the mitigation bank project. Measurable benefits to the long-term protection of farms on the opposite bank of the river have already been realized through breaching of the dike during construction of Phase 1 of the SHMB. View list of benefits of Agricultural Lands