AUBURN – Wetland mitigation has been one of the delays affecting the development of the Auburn Industrial Park.

The 78-acre park has about 15 acres of wetland that would be affected if the park were developed as planned. Environmental regulations allow developers to encroach on wetlands if they protect an equal amount of similar wetlands elsewhere.

But the nonprofit Auburn Business Development Corp. had no land to swap.

Enter George Schott. The local developer purchased the 80-acre Dingley Estate last year, most of it zoned for agriculture. He tapped the property this year, putting five acres into wetland protection so he could expand his retail development on the site where Best Buy is being built.

The ABDC approached him about tapping into the same reserve, and now have a purchase and sale agreement on 15 acres of the Dingley Estate, which can be used to offset development at the industrial park. The arrangement had to get the consensus of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

“We’re at the cutting edge of this stuff,” said Lucien Gosselin, director of the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council. “We needed to do this, or we would not get the permits.”

– Carol Coultas