Natural Resource Damage Assessment

Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) is the legal process that federal agencies, together with affected states and Indian tribes, use to evaluate the impacts of oil spills, hazardous waste sites, and ship groundings on natural resources both along the nation's coast and throughout its interior. NRDA partners, referred to collectively as "natural resource trustees", work through a formal process authorized under the Oil Pollution Act and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act to identify the extent of natural resource injuries, the quantity and quality of restoration necessary to compensate the public for those damages. A number of methods have been developed for completing this work, including Habitat Equivalency Analysis and Resource Equivalency Analysis.

Notes

• USFWS and NOAA typically collaborate to represent the United States, supported by the US Department of Justice
• Three offices within NOAA collaborate to implement NRDA under the DARRP program. https://www.darrp.noaa.gov/
• Typically WDOE is authorized by the Governor to represent the State of Washington.
• Indian Tribes participate as trustees based on on overlapping "usual and accustomed areas for fishing, hunting and gathering".