Critics call feds’ new ‘mitigation’ a coerced fee

File image: USGS
The concept of “mitigation” comes up a lot in stories about development in Alaska. Typically, it’s compensation a company has to pay for filling wetlands. Their permit may require that they improve another patch of wetlands nearby, or pay an organization to preserve wetlands somewhere else. But federal agencies have begun requiring mitigation for other kinds of environmental damage, and at a U.S. Senate hearing today, critics said it amounts to a coerced paymen