CEDR

Conservation Easement & Deed Restrictions (CEDR)

Over the last several decades, EPA Region 3 has entered into judicial and administrative settlements to resolve Clean Water Act (“CWA”) Section 404 violations that include the use of site protection instruments such as conservation easements (“CE”) or deed restrictions (“DR”) (hereinafter “CEDR”) to protect preservation, enhancement, and/or restoration of waters of the United States provided as part of injunctive relief packages. The use of CEDRs as protective instruments is encouraged to support the goal of “No Net Loss” for aquatic resources. EPA has created CEDR, an online mapping tool (a/k/a geo-spatial application) and document repository, to memorialize and track those legal instruments, ensuring the Agency and the public have the most up-to-date information on these instruments by making them available for local title recording offices, regulatory programs, title search companies and other public individuals or entities whose work may be impacted by the existence of such site protection instruments while also increasing their transparency, supporting the CWA Section 404 program’s objective of ensuring long-term protection of the restored sites/aquatic resources. CEDR incorporates an online (geospatial) mapping tool that displays the conserved or deed restricted area, including the aquatic resources (streams and wetlands) and associated buffer zones. The individual site polygons provide pop-up attribute tables that include a link to the associated legal documents supporting the site protection instrument, such as the instrument itself and the precipitating EPA enforcement action.

For additional information on this website and the CEDR project, click here.

For access to the online (geospatial) mapping tool, click here.

Delaware

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Pennsylvania

Virginia