Natural Resource Damage Assessment Research Articles

Natural resource damage assessments in the United States: rules and procedures for compensation from spills of hazardous substances and oil in waterways under US jurisdiction

Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) procedures in the US involve the use of uniform federally approved rules and procedures to assess economic losses and/or address restoration of injured resources that result from spills of hazardous substances and/or oil and petroleum substances in waterways under US jurisdiction. This effort started in the 1980s and involves two federal agencies that have developed separate federally approved procedures and rules, the US Department of Interior (US DOI) and the US Department of Commerce, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (US DOC, NOAA). This paper provides a brief overview of the federal laws applicable to resource damage assessments in the US, review of NRDA rules and procedures, and progress to date regarding US cases.

An assessment of injury to sediments and sediment-dwelling organisms in the Grand Calumet River and Indiana Harbor Area of Concern, USA.

This article is the first in a series of three that describe the results of a Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) conducted in the Grand Calumet River and Indiana Harbor Area of Concern (IHAOC). The assessment area is located in northwest Indiana and was divided into nine reaches to facilitate the assessment. This component of the NRDA was undertaken to determine if sediments and sediment-dwelling organisms have been injured due to exposure to contaminants that have accumulated in sediments as a result of discharges of oil or releases of other hazardous substances from industrial, municipal, and nonpoint sources. To support this assessment, information was compiled on the chemical composition of sediment and pore water; on the toxicity of whole sediments, pore water, and elutriates; and on the status of benthic invertebrate communities. The data on each of these indicators were compared to regionally relevant benchmarks to assess the presence and extent of injury to surface water resources ( i.e., sediments) or biological resources ( i.e., sediment-dwelling organisms). The results of this assessment indicate that sediment injury has occurred throughout the assessment area, with up to four distinct lines of evidence demonstrating injury within the various reaches. The primary contaminants of concern ( i.e., those substances that are present at concentrations that are sufficient to cause or substantially contribute to sediment injury) include metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and total polychlorinated biphenyls.

Assessment of Injury to Fish and Wildlife Resources in the Grand Calumet River and Indiana Harbor Area of Concern, USA

This article is the second in a series of three that describes the results of a Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) conducted in the Grand Calumet River and Indiana Harbor Area of Concern (IHAOC). The assessment area is located in northwest Indiana and was divided into nine reaches to facilitate the assessment. This component of the NRDA was undertaken to determine if fish and wildlife resources have been injured due to exposure to contaminants that are associated with discharges of oil or releases of other hazardous substances. To support this assessment, information was compiled on the chemical composition of sediment and tissues; on the toxicity of whole sediments, pore water, and elutriates to fish; on the status of fish communities; and on fish health. The data on each of these indicators were compared to regionally relevant benchmarks to assess the presence and extent of injury to fish and wildlife resources. The results of this assessment indicate that injury to fish and wildlife resources has occurred throughout the assessment area, with up to five distinct lines of evidence demonstrating injury within the various reaches. Based on the frequency of exceedance of the benchmarks for assessing sediment and tissue chemistry data, total polychlorinated biphenyls is the primary bioaccumulative contaminant of concern in the assessment area. It is important to note, however, that this assessment was restricted by the availability of published bioaccumulation-based sediment quality guidelines, tissue residue guidelines, and other benchmarks of sediment quality conditions. The availability of chemistry data for tissues also restricted this assessment in certain reaches of the assessment area. Furthermore, insufficient information was located to facilitate identification of the substances that are causing or substantially contributing to effects on fish (i.e., sediment toxicity, impaired fish health, or impaired fish community structure). Therefore, substances not included on the list of COCs cannot necessarily be considered to be of low priority with respect to sediment injury (e.g., metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, alkanes, alkenes, organochlorine pesticides, phthalates, dioxins, and furans, etc.).

Recognition of and Allocation Among Multiple Sources of PAH in Urban Sediments

The presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) in urban sediments around the U.S. is well established. The toxic, mutagenic, and carcinogenic characteristics attributed to this class of hydrocarbons typically warrant their close monitoring, removal (e.g., dredging), or isolation (e.g., capping) in order to protect or revitalize the local urban environments. The high costs and other liabilities associated with any remedial action of urban sediments, combined with the common occurrence of multiple potentially responsible parties (PRPs) with properties bordering urban waterways, is a recipe for legal wrangling among PRPs. Environmental forensic investigations, conducted appropriately, provide the insight necessary to defensibly identify both historic and/or current, point and non-point sources of PAH to an urban water body's sediments. The results from such investigations are sufficiently robust to support technical allocation strategies for determining responsibility among PRPs involved in oil spill assessments, Superfund allocation issues, 3rd party claims, or natural resource damage assessments (NRDA).

Maximizing conserved biodiversity: why ecosystem indicators and thresholds matter

Accounting for biodiversity is important in several different types of constrained choice problems, including public and private decisions for habitat and species conservation, the establishment of recreational parks and natural areas, mitigation banking, and natural resource damage assessment (particularly primary and/or compensatory restoration planning and scaling). In such applications it is important to give careful consideration to (1) the choice of biodiversity indicator(s) to be used, and (2) the role of discontinuous, nonlinear ecological processes in light of the decisionmaker's chosen time horizon. The former is important because the choice of indicator(s) can substantially influence decisions about conservation priority-setting and planning. The latter is critical for the same reason, notwithstanding that dynamic ecosystem processes have rarely been considered sufficiently, if at all, in such applications (in part because the processes usually are poorly understood or measured). In this manuscript we use avian diversity data, collected by one of the authors, from hardwood forest ecosystems in the eastern United States. We couple these data with estimates of species prevalence factors to construct a case study of how indicator choice and consideration of ecological thresholds influence the outcomes of biodiversity preservation problems. We show that (1) the choice of indicator(s) is critical, (2) failure to account for nonlinear, threshold effects in an ecosystem's future progression alters preservation decisions and ignores important information, (3) the effect of choosing different time horizons depends on the indicator used, and (4) for any given biodiversity indicator, dynamic solutions can depend on the time horizon chosen but not necessarily in monotonic or simple fashion. Our case study highlights the importance of further system-specific research on dynamic ecological progressions as well as uncertainty regarding future supply and demand for ecosystem service flows.

Liability and Environment

Liability and Environment by Prof. Lucas Bergkamp analyzes the role of law, in particular civil liability, in controlling environmental pollution and risk. modern environmental policy, liability has become a popular instrument. this book, Prof. Bergkamp takes a fresh look at civil liability for environmental harm in an inter- and transnational context. Over the last decades, environmental regulations have mushroomed, and liability exposure for environmental harm has expanded significantly. At the international, EC, and national level further proposals for onerous strict environmental liability regimes are pending. The pays which is an articulation of the cost internalization theory in the environmental area, is believed to justify such liability regimes. Applying an instrumental approach to law, Prof. Bergkamp aims to redefine the role of liability in the heavily regulated environmental area. He shows that in the regulatory state liability for environmental harm is not required by the polluter pays principle, is an uncertain and unreliable instrument for achieving prevention, results in an inefficient insurance scheme, and plays a dubious role in adjusting activity levels. Based on an analysis of the basic characteristics of alternative legal instruments, Prof. Bergkamp concludes that civil liability should play a more modest, limited role in an environmental law system dominated by public law. Where deterrence is the objective, objective fault liability can play a useful role as a sanction for violations of applicable standards. Where deterrence is not the objective, first party insurance or other public law regimes should be preferred over liability rules. addition to civil liability of private parties, Liability and Environment discusses state liability under international, EC, and national law. Under international and EC law, breach of a primary obligation triggers a state's liability. Prof. Bergkamp argues that this rule should be applied also to liability of private parties. the environmental area, a business' primary obligations are spelled out in detailed permit conditions, regulations and statutes. According to Prof. Bergkamp, only if a polluter breached a primary obligation, he should be liable for environmental harm. The system that Bergkamp advocates is an objective fault liability regime, in which public environmental law defines the standard of care for both government and industry. In rebuilding our civil liability system, we should keep in mind that what we believe to be good for industry should be good for every one (or it is not good for anyone), and what is good for private parties should be good for the state (or it is not good for either). rebuilding our civil liability system, the international law of state responsibility, which is unpolluted by risk spreading and activity level considerations, will guide us a long way. Liability and Environment covers also current trends and controversial issues in environmental law. It, for instance, analyzes corporate veil piercing theories that are invoked to impose liability on shareholders, and liability for natural resource damage and related assessment and valuation issues. Unreserved discussions address such topics as the stakeholder model of the corporation, sustainable development, and risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis. Following an assessment of the concepts of market and government failure, prof. Bergkamp presents a default-displacement model of liability, in which liability essentially serves as a stopgap against abnormal behavior in areas that are not yet regulated and as a sanction in regulated areas. This book is aimed at advanced law students, academic scholars, and practitioners. addition, it is of interest to policy and legislative analysts, legislators, and government officials. Economists, philosophers, free trade and laissez faire-supporters, as well as environmentalists may benefit from its wide-ranging, thought-provoking perspectives. the engaging analysis presented in the book, many current issues of modern environmental law and policy are discussed. It is written in plain, direct language, and tries to avoid excessive use of legalese and technical terminology, so that it is accessible to any reader.

NET ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS ANALYSIS TO EVALUATE MITIGATION ALTERNATIVES FOR A PIPELINE SITING

ABSTRACT A net environmental benefits analysis (NEBA) approach offers a powerful set of tools for rigorously evaluating and comparing the natural resource benefits of alternative mitigation, restoration, enhancement, and preservation actions for compensating for natural resource damages, site remediation and pipeline-siting projects, for example. Combining the results of the NEBA with an assessment of the costs of the alternative measures shows which alternative(s) achieve a net environmental benefit at least cost. NEBA uses environmental or monetary metrics to measure the change in the value of ecological services from the site under alternative actions compared to the baseline condition. This presentation describes a NEBA application to a pipeline-siting project. The approach is equivalent to evaluating compensatory restoration as part of a natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90). For example, under NRDA, a habitat equivalency analysis (HEA) model almost always is used in a two-sided NEBA, which sums the negative environmental benefits—interim losses—that result from the oil spill injury on the debit side and compares to the sum of the positive environmental benefits due to the compensatory restoration actions on the credit side. Most reports prepared as part of NRDAs are confidential. However, the NEBA used in the present pipeline-siting example is equivalent to how it has been applied in NRDA applications including two oil spills involving pipelines, the Colonial Pipeline Sugarland Run NRDA and the Colonial/Texaco Pipeline San Jacinto River Oil Spill. The present pipeline-siting example uses NEBA to determine the quantity of quality-adjusted acres of forested wetland that are needed to offset a loss in forested wetland acreage because of the construction and operation of the proposed pipeline.

THE INTRUSION OF CRIMINAL LAW ON THE NRDA PROCESS

ABSTRACT A primary goal of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) is to make the environment and public whole for injuries to natural resources that result from the discharge of oil. OPA 90 authorizes state and federal natural resource agencies to serve as trustees for natural resources and provides them with the responsibility, through a natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) process, to ensure that injured natural resources are restored. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) promulgated damage assessment regulations, and in an attempt to correct deficiencies and meet OPA 90 mandates, developed a framework intended to promote expeditious restoration. To lessen the common litigious nature of the NRDA process, the regulations encourage active participation by a responsible party in a cooperative assessment of damages. Natural resource trustee agencies also have authority to enforce criminal aspects of other statutes for impacts resulting from an oil spill. However, when agencies initiate a criminal investigation under these statutes for an oil spill, the goals mandated in OPA 90 and set forth in the NOAA regulations can be substantially undermined. There are potential solutions that could, at least partially, resolve this dilemma for the responsible party to a point where participation in the NRDA process would not unduly prejudice its position in a criminal investigation. Such solutions might include written agreements as to communications and transactional use of immunity agreements, stay of proceedings, and protective orders, which singly, or in combination, could prove invaluable in preserving a progressive NRDA process, fully inclusive of the responsible party.

The Lake Barre Oil Spill Nrda: From Response To Restoration

ABSTRACT A release of approximately 6,561 barrels of crude oil from a Texaco pipeline into Lake Barre in May 1997 injured marsh, birds, and aquatic fauna. Texaco was proactive in dealing with the trustees in the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process and stayed directly involved throughout; resulting in a cooperative assessment. The trustees focused quickly on the key injuries that required assessment. There was early agreement to conduct a cooperative, restoration-based NRDA, and to design field studies for the injured marsh to provide inputs for scaling using habitat equivalency analysis (HEA). It also was agreed that for this incident, field studies to assess bird and aquatic faunal injury would not be cost-effective or likely improve the accuracy of injury estimates. Although agreement on a common quantification approach for faunal injury was not reached, the two sides agreed on how much restoration was appropriate. The parties developed an extensive list of restoration alternatives, and although the trustees retained the final decision making authority, there were no significant disagreements on how various alternatives ranked according to restoration selection criteria. The selected project is planting saltmarsh vegetation on a platform of dredged material placed on East Timbalier Island by the Coastal Wetland Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) program. No CWPPRA funds were available for planting. In scaling the restoration, Texaco will only get credit for the ecological services provided by their planting above that which would occur in the absence of planting. Factors such as erosion rates expected with and without planting and the rate of natural colonization of marsh in the absence of planting were considered in the scaling calculations. The trustees and Texaco jointly briefed attorneys for both sides throughout the NRDA process, but were not active participants in meetings regarding technical matters. These briefings ensured a quick transition from the injury assessment and restoration project selection process to settlement negotiations. A consent decree was lodged with the court in September 1999. Texaco will implement the restoration and the monitoring plan, and pay all trustee assessment and restoration oversight costs as part of the settlement.

SOURCE CHARACTERIZATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF NEW CARISSA OIL IN NRDA ENVIRONMENTAL SAMPLES USING A COMBINED STATISTICAL AND FINGERPRINTING APPROACH1

ABSTRACT Source oil characterization and its subsequent identification and quantification in different receiving environments are integral components of a natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) following a spill. When the M/V New Carissa broke up on the Oregon coast in February 1999, it released an estimated 70,000 gallons of two bunker fuels and two diesel fuels. Numerous oil, water, sediment, and tissue samples were subsequently analyzed for the standard suite of aliphatic and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) fractions, as well as steranes and triterpanes to use in chemical fingerprinting in support of the NRDA process. The fingerprinting task was uniquely complex with this spill because of the four major source oils of highly disparate compositions and additional compositional changes occurring as a result of partial in situ burning and release of residual fuels onboard the vessel during the response effort. Also unique to NRDA process was the segregated sampling of dissolved-phase and dispersed-oil droplet fractions from the water column, information that proved invaluable in the fingerprinting process. To assist with the complex data analysis in identifying New Carissa oil in environmental samples, a combination of multivariate principal-component analyses and hierarchical agglomerative-cluster analyses, conventional double-ratio analyses of selected PAH, and custom computer displays to allow comparison of multiple graphs on a single page was developed. Results show two different mechanisms of hydrocarbon uptake into affected organisms: direct uptake of dissolved-phase PAH from the water column into crab tissues, and accumulation of aliphatic and aromatic constituents from dispersed oil droplets and oiled suspended particulate material (SPM) by filter-feeding organisms. From the combined statistical and fingerprinting process, it was possible to differentiate New Carissa oil from background combustion-derived (and sediment-associated) PAH in selected clam and oyster tissue samples from inside Coos Bay. Also documented was interstitial water contamination of otherwise clean and unoiled sandy beach substrates by offshore dissolved-phase PAH, and the accumulation of hydrocarbons from the surface microlayer by diatoms.

THE SCAT COORDINATOR: A LIAISON BETWEEN RESPONSE AND RESTORATION

ABSTRACT Over the past decade, the Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Team (SCAT) process has become an integral component during the response phase of an oil spill. SCAT data are used to formulate plans for shoreline cleanup and to provide a basis for determining when to cease operations. The SCAT data and observations are often the only and/or most complete documentation of shoreline impact for the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA). While the response phase and the NRDA may proceed simultaneously, they have different goals and application, and are usually conducted by separate teams. A distinct lack of interaction between response activities and damage assessment-based restoration activities frequently exists, though the data can be collected to satisfy the requirements of both. To bridge this gap, the SCAT Coordinator can integrate an understanding of common objectives during the development of cleanup guidelines, constraints, and endpoints combined with knowledge of the goal of reducing the overall magnitude of resource injury and the time necessary for environmental recovery. As a representative of either the Responsible Party (RP) or a government agency, the SCAT Coordinator also can provide a quality control function, thus ensuring that the data are recorded correctly and are accessible to support the RP in the NRDA.

Quantifying the Scale of Restoration Required to Compensate for the Impacts of the North Cape Oil Spill on Fish and Invertebrates

ABSTRACT The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA) seeks to make the environment and public whole for injury to or loss of natural resources and services as a result of a discharge of oil. This means that restoration projects implemented as part of a natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) must be of a sufficient scale to produce resources and services of the same type and quality and of comparable value to those that were lost. Services, for an NRDA, include both the ecological and human uses of the resources. Also, the loss must be quantified from the time of impact until the resource returns to baseline conditions—the level in the absence of the impact. This paper details a series of methods that may be used for scaling NRDA restoration projects and describes how these methods were used in the restoring the injuries incurred as a result of the North Cape oil spill.

Scaling of Injury To Reef Flat Habitats Resulting From Removal Actions of Grounded Vessels in Pago Pago, American Samoa

ABSTRACT In 1999, the U.S. Coast Guard developed an Incident Action Plan (IAP) to remove oil and hazardous materials from nine foreign-owned tuna longliner vessels grounded on the reef flat within Pago Pago Harbor, American Samoa. This plan involved the construction of rock and trestle causeways and rock working platforms to access the clusters of vessels, and partial removal of the vessels to access the oil and hazardous materials onboard. A natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) study was conducted to quantify the injuries associated with the response action and scale emergency restoration alternatives. A rapid field assessment program was implemented to characterize the benthic habitats around the grounded vessels and in the footprints of the proposed rock and trestle causeways and working platforms. Likely impacts to the dominant habitat types (coral, algal turf, and Halimeda/algal turf communities) from the proposed response actions were: (1) crushing and mortality in areas of fill deposition; (2) partial crushing in spillage zones around fill areas; (3) damages to the reef flat rock platform and framework due to collapse and fracturing; (4) physical injury from remobilization of residual materials remaining on the flat after fill removal; (5) water quality impacts from increased suspended sediment levels during fill placement, use, and removal; and (6) shading impacts to biota under trestles. These injuries were quantified in terms of the dimensions and degree of mortality and/or reduced function for different impacts. Habitat recovery rates for physical crushing and shading were developed, as well. Emergency restoration options were identified and scaled in terms of habitat credits, with one of the preferred options being complete removal of the vessel hulls followed by reef stabilization.

Extrapolating Injury from Larger to Smaller Oil Spills: Lessons in Louisiana

ABSTRACT One challenge for trustees in a natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) is to adequately quantify natural resource injuries in a cost-effective manner. This is particularly true for smaller spills, where the cost of more expansive and more expensive injury assessment studies could dwarf the cost of the restoration actions to compensate for those injuries. The need for cost-effective assessments must he balanced against the need for the assessment methods to be technically defensible and useful in identifying and scaling appropriate restoration actions. In this paper, it is shown how the injury assessment results from the Lake Barre oil spill of May 1997 (which released 6,561 barrels of crude oil) were used to help inform trustees about the likely magnitude of injury for two smaller crude oil spills in Louisiana. For the Lake Barre spill, the trustees developed an incident-specific model—adapted from the Type A model—to quantify injury to birds and aquatic fauna. The results of this model were used to evaluate a restoration offer as compensation for these injuries from the responsible party (RP). Subsequently, the results of the Lake Barre assessment were used to help quantify injury to birds and aquatic organisms for the September 1998 release of up to 1,500 barrels of crude oil from a well blowout into Lake Grande Ecaille. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) again used the Lake Barre results to quantify injury to water column organisms for a November 1999 release of 850 barrels of crude oil from a pipeline in Four-Bayou Pass. Estimating injury by extrapolation from one spill to similar spills represents one cost-effective approach toward quantifying injury for small incidents, and should be considered as a potential injury assessment method for those spills where it is impractical or otherwise difficult to justify conducting large incident-specific injury studies. This technique can be done quickly, potentially speeding the settlement and restoration implementation process, thereby compensating the public in an expeditious manner.

SUSTAINABLE SHIPPING: THE BENEFITS OF THE “SAFETY CULTURE” FAR OUTWEIGH THE COSTS

ABSTRACT An important challenge for the maritime industry is whether those involved in the transport of oil will embrace the concept that the “safety culture,” which includes protection of the environment, is “good business.” Ship owners/operators and others in the maritime business will adopt the safety culture when they believe in a “continuous and never-ending improvement process as a means to promote productivity and profitability.” Sustainable shipping requires the prevention of costly accidents and activation of “best response,” thus reducing environmental impacts if oil spills happen. Proactive safety management, creation of a quality system with accountability in each link, training of qualified mariners, and using the appropriate response technologies are examples of policy considerations needed to implement this culture. These policy goals should replace short-term thinking of profit maximization and crisis reaction. Safety saves dollars. Oil spills result in tangible, direct losses of life; injuries; and damage to the environment, cargo, and vessel. Direct costs measure only part of the total. Indirect and hidden costs are harder to quantify. They include, for example, reduced worker morale and productivity, eroding customer base, and in this litigious age, Natural Resource Damage Assessments (NRDAs), economic loss claims, increased insurance costs, fines, imprisonment of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and loss to the corporation for their services, public notoriety, lost opportunity, and many other similar losses. The indirect and hidden costs equate to an increase in direct costs, using a conservative multiplier of 2.7 to 1. Estimates of the total cost of all categories for all vessels involved in marine incidents annually are between $581 million to $1 billion. (Conversely, high quality safety management yields cost savings annually for industry of between $500 million and $1 billion, or an average for individual companies of $200,000). True cost accounting (measuring all costs—external, internal, hidden) translates to a better bottom line.

The Cost of Certainty in Natural Resource Damage Assessment Under the Oil Pollution Act of 19901

ABSTRACT Pursuant to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), natural resource trustees are empowered to seek recovery for damages to natural resources caused by discharges of oil and/or certain threats of discharges of oil. To determine the proper amount of damages, trustees undertake the process of “scaling,” which is an attempt to calculate the size of restoration actions that would be required to expedite recovery of injured natural resources to baseline and compensate the public for interim lost resources and services. Trustees utilize various scaling methods, including service-to-service methods, such as habitat equivalency analysis, and value-to-value methods, such as hedonic price models and contingent valuation. Regardless of the method chosen, however, the scaling is directly dependent on the level of injury caused by a spill. Disputes between trustees and those parties designated as responsible for the spill (responsible parties or RPs) often occur in determining the level of injury. In many cases, as a result of either these disputes or the trustees' desire to determine the precise level of injury, trustees undertake costly and time-consuming injury studies. These studies oftentimes are inefficient because the resulting gains in certainty often are achieved through disproportionately expensive studies relative to the resulting gains in restoration. In certain instances, attempts to achieve greater certainty can destroy an otherwise efficient and cooperative restoration effort and run contrary to the OPA 90 regulations. Such attempts also can lead to costly litigation for both the public and the RP involved. Lastly, attempts to achieve greater certainty during injury assessment can unnecessarily increase the scale of compensatory restoration because of delays in implementing restoration actions. Both trustees and RPs must recognize those instances in which achieving greater certainty leads to increased costs to both the public and the RP. In such situations, stipulating to certain injury assumptions can lead to overall net gains for both the public and the RP. These stipulations can be used to induce RPs to increase other aspects of the restoration, thereby increasing overall gains for the public at less cost to the RP.

American Samoa Longliner Response, Wreck Removal, and Restoration Project1

ABSTRACT In 1991, Typhoon Val struck American Samoa and grounded nine long liner fishing vessels on the reef in Pago Pago Harbor. The potential for oil spills from the wrecks and the lack of an identifiable responsible party, prompted the U.S. Coast Guard Federal On-Scene Coordinator (FOSC) at Marine Safety Office (MSO) Honolulu to immediately federalize the project. Unfortunately, only a portion of the oil was discovered and removed and a viable responsible party was never identified. Because of repeated small spills from the vessels in subsequent years and the potential for a much larger spill due to remaining oil onboard, the FOSC again federalized in May 1999, and a cleanup contractor was deployed to the scene. The Coast Guard supervised response efforts that employed heavy equipment to cut open six of the vessels in the inner harbor to remove oil and hazardous materials. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) then administered removal of the remaining portions of the wrecks using Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) funding. In March 2000, a salvage contractor pulled the two remaining wrecks intact from the reef in the outer harbor and sunk them at a pre-designated offshore dump site. At the conclusion of the response, nearly 36,000 gallons of oil and approximately 600 pounds of anhydrous ammonia were removed from the wrecks at a cost of over $12 million. Restoration costs totaled approximately $3 million.

Innovative Recovery of Nonfloating Oils, Upham Beach, Florida

ABSTRACT Marine Safety Office (MSO) Tampa, in cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, conducted a unique and innovative oil recovery operation involving the removal of submerged and buried oil. Leveraging into an existing federally funded beach renourishment project as the primary means of oil recovery not only minimized costs, but also significantly reduced the waste stream. This is the first time such a dual-purpose operation has been conducted. Throughout the course of the recovery operation, innovative recovery techniques were developed, such as the creation of a 1,000 foot by 500 foot retention pond that was located on the beach and was constructed entirely of sand. This pond, which is typical of a construction site, receives and controls runoff water. In this case, the pond received all of the dredged material including the oil, which was collected and vacuumed off the pond. The use of a weir box outfall allowed for the easy removal of the large amount of water that was deposited with the dredged material. This project was initiated when the Corps of Engineers uncovered pockets of submerged oil during a beach renourishment project. The oil was linked to a major spill occurring in 1993 where a Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) was signed recently. Because of this agreement, no Responsible Party could be named under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), and all oil removal costs were born by the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund (OSLTF).

Case Study: Spill of JP5 Fuel at Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, Puerto Rico, into a Basin Mangrove Forest

ABSTRACT The U.S. Roosevelt Roads Naval Station (RRNS) lies near the municipality of Ceiba on the southeastern coast of Puerto Rico. On October 20, 1999, RRNS personnel reported a spill of JP5 fuel oil, which was officially determined to be 112,000 gallons. The oil spilled from a day-tank into a 50-acre basin mangrove forest and then into the northern Ensenada Harbor. Initial spill response activities by the U.S. Navy Construction Battalion (Seabees), including construction and placement of both underflow and culvert dams, were carried out in the face of an approaching hurncane. This damming effort resulted in both positive and negative consequences for the survival of the mangrove forest. In addition to the cleanup activities, the federal trustees—including the U.S. Navy (USN), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)—initiated a natural resource damage assessment (NRDA). The primary objectives of the damage assessment were to identify potential natural resources at risk, determine the horizontal extent of contamination within the basin mangrove, and document exposure and/or injuries to natural resources resulting from the spill. This paper examines the overall effectiveness of the spill response operations, discusses the difficulties in conducting cleanup activities in a basin mangrove environment, and describes coordination efforts between cleanup activities and natural resource response activities.

OPA 90 Effectiveness: Past, Present, and Future

ABSTRACT Since its inception, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) was intended to greatly improve the ability to respond to large spills in the United States and has been the subject of frequent discussion and debate within the United States and elsewhere. Its provisions created new regulatory programs, expanded existing requirements, and established a variety of competency requirements for those entities and personnel involved in the production, transport, handling, or storage of petroleum within the United States. Tens upon tens of articles have been published in prior Proceedings of the International Oil Spill Conference (IOSC) and in many other venues about legislative intent, subsequent regulatory programs and their implementation, interagency negotiations, industry compliance successes or difficulties, training issues, etc. OPA 90 has also had an impact on U.S. policies internationally and in U.S. participation in international spill conventions/treaties. In recognition of a decade's passage since its enactment, IOSC sponsors commissioned a review and analysis of the effectiveness of OPA 90 and the interrelationship of OPA 90 with other oil spill laws and rules in the world. Another important purpose was to identify issues for the related panel discussion of this topic at the 2001 IOSC. This review was conducted using a questionnaire to acquire input from a broad range of individuals with OPA 90 expertise and experience. An informal survey of 57 questions in four sections was prepared and distributed to 22 participants. These participants were selected to represent a core of knowledge about OPA 90 and its history of implementation. Findings from the survey are presented to foster discussion and debate, educate members of the spill response community, assist with resolution of outstanding issues, and help focus on future issues that will need attention. The rate of response to the survey questions was high and enabled a broad review of the effectiveness of some of the various OPA 90 requirements. Questions were in either multiple-choice or essay format. Commonalties, differences, and issues were identified from all responses and used to evaluate OPA 90. From the commonalties and differences in the responses, selected OPA 90 requirements were classified as effective or ineffective. Based on an analysis of multiple-choice and essay answers, respondents generally agreed that OPA 90 was moderately effective (across all covered provisions). Closer examination of the four survey sections, however, indicated distinct concerns and benefits derived from implementation of OPA 90. In addition, where OPA 90 provisions were judged effective, caveats sometimes followed. Despite the effective rating of many OPA 90 prevention provisions, prevention still needs more attention based on the opinions of the survey respondents. Some respondents felt more attention and resources often are given to preparing to respond to a spill than to preventing spills, even though preventing a spill is considered preferable. Further, some believed that spill prevention would be enhanced if vessels with large, onboard bunker fuel storage also were subject to prevention requirements similar to OPA 90 requirements for vessels carrying petroleum as cargo. Survey feedback indicated that better Area Contingency Plans (ACPs) could result in significant improvements in response preparedness. ACPs need to be improved in many geographic areas. ACPs should be more response-oriented and less like a reference document, and be made more readily available and useable. Many respondents viewed these items as the foundation for any major improvements in response planning. In the United States, spill response using a multiparty management system, which is inclusive of broad stakeholder groups, differs from systems in other countries. Most felt that response activities can impact restoration activities greatly, but the legal structure does not support a seamless and efficient coordination of response and restoration. Coordination between response and restoration needs to be improved to avoid response delays and promote better/faster resource restoration. The biggest concern expressed by survey respondents regarding restoration dealt with management of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process. Damage assessments and restoration management need to be streamlined, partly because too many interested parties make decision making inefficient. Some felt that public review of restoration plans led to better results; others felt public review delayed timely restoration activities. While international cooperation has increased over the last decade, respondents felt there was room for further improvement. In particular, sharing personnel and resources better, joining inspection and control programs, and drafting international restoration guidelines were some of the improvement activities mentioned. Findings from this survey have provided insights on what actions are needed to further improve spill prevention, preparedness, response, and restoration. Now is the time to renew this effort and improve performance to a higher plane globally. 2001 IOSC sponsors and Issue Paper Subcommittee desire the response community's commitment and solicit its involvement toward this goal.