Three interesting cases have cropped up lately involving the convoluted concept known as wetland mitigation, the idea that you can make up for destroying a wetland by somehow replacing its functions and values.

As we documented extensively in "Paving Paradise," there are plenty of problems with mitigation. But the past month has brought three new twists on this old story.

1) Down in Fort Myers, Lee County officials saw their big plans for a new Red Sox spring training stadium thrown into disarray because of wetland mitigation, according to the Naples Daily News. The current property owner promised Lee County officials that the new stadium would need no permits for destroying wetlands, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers disagreed, because of a little pond on the land.

“It’s a relatively small man-made lake,” said an attorney for the property owner, Waterman Development. “It’s a hole dug in the uplands.”

Well, yes, it's a lake -- except it doesn't count as a lake, because it "was in fact dug as mitigation for the original approved development," the paper reported.

In other words, that lake is supposed to be fulfilling the same functions and values of the wetlands that were wiped out there 20 years ago. An that means the Corps has to count it as if it's a wetland, even though it sure doesn't look like one and probably doesn't really function as one either.

Most likely Waterman will now have to somehow (ahem) mitigate for the mitigation.

2) Our second fascinating twist on mitigation comes out of North Carolina, where a pair of mitigation bank owners are in a battle royal over what some folks are calling a mitigation double-dip.

As the Raleigh News & Observer reported last week: "This year, state environmental officials agreed to pay a Maryland company nearly $1 million for its work to help rid the Neuse River Basin of tons of nitrogen, which pollutes drinking water. Here's the catch for North Carolina taxpayers: The state Department of Transportation paid $1.8 million for the same work several years ago."

The DOT contract paid for mitigation for wiping out wetlands and streams with road projects. One of the functions and values of a wetland is that it helps filter out water pollution. So now the Maryland company, EBX, is raking in taxpayer money for the nutrient pollution cleanup that its mitigation wetlands have already performed.

By double-dipping, EBX -- headed up by George Kelly, the current president of the National Mitigation Banking Association -- was able to undercut the pollution credit price being charged by Restoration Systems, headed up by former association director George Howard (whom readers of "Paving Paradise" may remember from the chapter "Banking on Phony Numbers"). Howard has responded by pulling together what the publication Ecosystem Marketplace described as "an army of attorneys, fellow mitigation bankers, and environmentalists."

The battle over defining what counts as mitigation has become so snarled in North Carolina that after a two-hour discussion by a state subcommittee, the chairman told the Raleigh paper: "I'm sure we're making progress. I wish I could tell you what it is."

3) And finally, back in Florida, the owner of the nation's largest migitation bank -- Farmton, over in Brevard and Volusia counties -- wants to turn some of its vast land holdings into a new city. County officials like the idea, although the Florida Department of Community Affairs and local environmentalists object to the location far from any highway or sewer and water line.

One of their concerns, according to Florida Today: the impact this 2,306-unit development would have on wetlands. But hey, mitigating for the damage should be easy -- Farmton could just pay itself for credits from the restoration work that it's already done.

What we found in "Paving Paradise" was that mitigation rarely made up for the wetlands that were wiped out. We also found that regulators rarely followed what federal rules required as far as the steps of avoiding wetlands, then minimizing the damage, and then -- and only then -- considering mitigation.

Considering how convoluted these number games of mitigation have become, avoidance sure seems a lot simpler.