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There are a wide range of legal, technical and economic practice issues embedded in the natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) and restoration process. Two sets of federal regulations provide the overall construct for performing NRDAs, both involving sequential phases of assessment and restoration. The US Department of the Interior NRDA regulations, promulgated under CERCLA, include four phases: (1) Pre-assessment Screen; (2) Assessment Plan; (3) Assessment Implementation; and (4) Post Assessment. 43 CFR §11.13. The US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration NRDA regulations, promulgated under the Oil Pollution Act, include three phases: (1) Pre-assessment; (2) Restoration Planning; and (3) Restoration Implementation. 15 CFR §990.12
By way of example, some of the issues relevant to the conduct of NRDAs, include the following and we invite additions and modifications:
- Determining Natural Resource Injury
- Defining Baseline
- Determining Causation (the linkage between the release and effects)
- Quantifying Natural Resource Injury
- Scientifically Linking Injuries and Services Losses
- Quantifying Service Losses
- Scaling Service Losses
- Quantifying Cultural Resource Services
- Using Habitat Equivalency Analysis and Other Scaling Approaches
- Determining Metrics for Equivalency Analysis Methods
- Incorporating Uncertainty in Damage Assessment
- Performing Cooperative Natural Resource Damage Assessments
- Linking Restoration Projects to Natural Resource Damage
- Interrelationships of Remediation and Restoration
- Upfront Restoration (also termed Restoration Banking)
- Assessing Groundwater-Related Damage Assessment and Identifying Restoration Projects
- Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA) and Natural Resource Damage Assessment Interface
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