MARSHALL — This week, Lyon County Commissioners talked about the possibility of selling some of the county’s wetland credits to a state agency. Commissioners weren’t in favor of the idea, however, and opted not to take action on a request for proposals.

Lyon County Environmental Administrator Roger Schroeder brought the topic of wetland credit sales forward at Tuesday’s County Board meeting.

“I got a request from the Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources, indicating that they are issuing a request for proposals on sale of wetland credits,” Schroeder said. The wetland credit purchases BWSR was proposing would be used to offset the impacts of road construction projects on wetlands across Minnesota.

BWSR was looking to buy wetland credits from areas of the state that included parts of Lincoln, Lyon and Yellow Medicine Counties. According to agenda packet materials from Tuesday’s commissioner meeting, Lyon County owns about 10 acres of wetland.

“The RFP, basically if this board is interested in selling any portion of the wetland credits, we set the proposal price and the only requirement is that a minimum of two wetland credits are offered for sale,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder said Lyon County had kept its remaining 10 wetland credits for 10 years or more. “The main reason we held on to them is in case the local road bank program ever was not fully funded. So if the highway engineer would not be able to access that program through BWSR, then at least we’ve got some on standby that we control.”

In past years, Lyon County has used the sale of wetland credits to buy county parkland, Schroeder said.

Commissioner Rick Anderson said he thought the county’s intent was to hang on to its bank of the remaining 10 wetland credits.

“When we set this up, I thought this was going to be there for a long, long time, that the 10 acres weren’t going to go away,” Anderson said. He said it could benefit the county to have wetland credits available for county projects. One example would be if the county ever needed land for a future landfill, he said.

After more discussion, commissioner consensus was not to submit a proposal to sell Lyon County wetland credits.