The Time it Takes for Restoration - Mitigation Bank Timelines 2026 Update

Our stand-alone executive summary for the latest update of our “The Time It Takes for Restoration” series is out. This is the third round of our analysis of how long USACE takes to approve mitigation bank instruments, and this time we went further into the statistics: regression, trend tests, and segmented analysis around specific USACE actions, including the 2020 performance metric and the 2023 and 2024 memos on timeliness.

The headline isn't a dramatic one. National timelines are holding fairly steady overall. There's one encouraging sign: the median mandatory federal processing time dropped 12 days from our last report, so a typical bank is inching closer to the 225-day target, even as the average stays well above it. Sponsor-side processing time is heading the other direction, up 11 days a year.

Some categories shifted after the 2020 metric adoption, and we break that down by district in the executive summary.

This is the high-level version. A full report with additional tables, figures, and district-by-district detail is coming later this year. Take a look, and see what's happening where you work.