Assessing Impact of Ecological Damage From Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Filed under: Discovery,Gulf Oil Spill,News & Resources
(Click to enlarge) In this Sunday, April 10, 2011 picture, workers clean a section of shoreline heavily damaged by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill at the mouth of the Mississippi River where it meets the Gulf of Mexico. (Credit: Gerald Herbert / AP Photo)
(From the National Academy of Sciences) – The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 establishes a formal legal framework for determining when an oil spill results in an “injury.” Through a process known as the Natural Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA), representatives of federal and state governments, tribes, and other “trustees” of the affected ecosystem must attempt to quantify the extent of damages caused by a spill, develop and monitor restoration plans, and seek compensation from the parties deemed responsible. Historically, NRDA has been used to measure losses in ecological terms, such as the number of fish killed or acres of marsh damaged, and has usually been applied to smaller, relatively contained spills in shallow water.
Recognizing the unique aspects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the ramifications of the complex task of assessing damages through the NRDA process, Congress asked the National Research Council to examine how to evaluate the impacts of the ecological damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The preliminary report from the National Research Council can be downloaded here.
