NOAA’s Damage Assessment,
Remediation, and Restoration Program (DARRP) collaborates with other
agencies, industry, and citizens to protect and restore coastal and marine
resources threatened or injured by oil spills, releases of hazardous
substances, and vessel groundings.
About DARRP
|
NOAA acts as a trustee on behalf of the public to protect and restore coastal
and marine resources. NOAA has been working to protect and restore injured
natural resources at hazardous waste sites and oil spills since the early
1980’s. NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program (DARRP)
was formally created in 1992 after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. The
program provides permanent expertise within NOAA to assess and restore natural
resources injured by releases of oil and hazardous substances, as well as by
physical impacts, such as vessel groundings in National Marine Sanctuaries. For
more than 20 years, NOAA has worked cooperatively with remedial agencies,
responsible parties, and teams of state, tribal, and federal co-trustees
to implement remedial actions that protect NOAA trust resources and
to recover more than $2.3 billion from responsible parties for the protection
and restoration of coastal resources, including anadromous fish, marine
mammals, wetlands, reefs, and other coastal habitats.
DARRP's multidisciplinary team of scientists, economists, and attorneys works
with response agencies and co-trustees to—
-
Act on-site during an emergency to collect data used to assist with cleanup and
assess risk and injury to NOAA trust resources;
-
Ensure adequate protection of and evaluation of risk to NOAA trust resources
during cleanup or remediation, by coordinating with and advising cleanup
agencies including the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency, in order to assure long-term protection of natural resources;
-
Determine the extent and magnitude of environmental injuries and lost services;
-
Define the type and scope of restoration best suited to address these injuries
and lost services;
-
Work cooperatively with responsible parties or pursue other strategies to
resolve natural resource liability; and
-
Implement projects to restore injured NOAA trust resources and associated
services.
NOAA’s DARRP encourages responsible parties to participate in cooperative
damage assessment and restoration planning activities. By focusing on
restoration early in the process, NOAA integrates risk and injury assessments
with cleanup and restoration planning. This offers industry a practical and
cost-effective way to resolve liability. In addition to working cooperatively
with responsible parties at oil spills and hazardous waste sites, DARRP
regularly convenes industry, government, NGOs, and other stakeholder groups to
identify methods for improving assessments and cleanups, reducing costs, and
restoring resources more quickly and more effectively. Through such
innovative partnerships, NOAA is reversing the effects of coastal contamination
and ensuring that the environment is protected and restored.
Organization
DARRP experts are located in key coastal regions around the U.S. to ensure a
quick response when incidents occur and to carry out day-to-day assessment,
protection and restoration activities.
DARRP is made up of three offices within NOAA:
-
The
Assessment and Restoration Division (ARD), located in the Office of
Response and Restoration, works to protect and restore NOAA trust resources
injured by releases of oil and hazardous materials. ARD works to determine what
resources and associated services may have been injured or lost to the public
and to identify the type and scope of protection and restoration best suited to
address these injuries;
-
The Restoration Center (RC)
located in the Office of Habitat Conservation coordinates and conducts
restoration planning and implementation, as well as monitoring the success of
implemented restoration projects; and
-
The Office of General
Counsel for Natural Resources (GCNR) provides legal support for DARRP
and deals with all legal matters associated with NOAA's natural resource
trusteeship.
|