Research Section 404 permit basics and public compensatory-mitigation data via USACE
domain: usace.army.mil · 4 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
For Section 404/Rivers and Harbors Act permit process basics, start at USACE's Civil Works Regulatory Program page (usace.army.mil/Missions/Civil-Works/Regulatory-Program-and-Permits) and the applicable Nationwide Permit list.
For compensatory mitigation bank / in-lieu-fee program data (credits, service areas, sponsor info), use RIBITS (ribits.ops.usace.army.mil), a public-facing system tracking thousands of bank and ILF sites nationally.
For individual permit application records, use the public ORM viewer at permits.ops.usace.army.mil/orm-public rather than assuming general public access to the internal ORM2 case-management database.
Do not expect a documented bulk-export REST API for RIBITS or the public ORM viewer — both are search/browse web applications; plan on manual queries, not automated bulk pulls.
Known gotchas
ORM2 is USACE's internal case-tracking system; the public only gets the 'orm-public' viewer subset, which requires JavaScript and has no documented API — don't cite ORM2 itself as an open dataset.
RIBITS covers mitigation banking/ILF programs, not individual permit applications — don't use it to check the status of a specific project's 404 permit.
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