Compensatory Restoration

2006 ◽  
pp. 77-93
Author(s):  
Stephen Gittings ◽  
Tony Penn ◽  
Sharon Shutler ◽  
Joe Schittone
Keyword(s):  
Compensatory Restoration

Compensatory Restoration of Mangrove Habitat Following the Tampa Bay Oil Spill

2001 ◽  
Vol 2001 (1) ◽  
pp. 761-767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary S. Mauseth ◽  
Jane S. Urquhart-Donnelly ◽  
Roy R. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Mangrove Forest ◽  
Monitoring Program ◽  
Tampa Bay ◽  
Fuel Oil ◽  
Assessment Process ◽  
Performance Criteria ◽  
Disposal Site ◽  
The North ◽  
Dredge Spoil ◽  
Compensatory Restoration

ABSTRACT In 1993, an incident involving three vessels near the entrance to Tampa Bay, near St. Petersburg, Florida, resulted in a discharge approximately 300,000 gallons of No. 6. fuel oil into the waters off Egmont Key. The oil contacted the shores from Egmont Key to locations approximately 14 miles to the north. Oil also entered Boca Ciega Bay through John's Pass and impacted four small islands that supported mature overwash mangrove forest. A cooperative damage assessment process was developed between the Responsible Parties (RPs) and the trustees for the natural resources: the state of Florida, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Through the cooperative process, several alternatives for primary and compensatory restoration were developed. In considering alternatives to compensate for impacts to epibenthic communities, fish and bird habitats, wetlands, and mangrove communities, the trustees and the RPs considered purchase of shoreline habitat and restoration of mangrove forest at several sites. The RP developed a proposal to purchase and deed into public ownership in perpetuity, a 10.67-acre parcel of land on the west bank of Cross Bayou in Boca Ciega Bay that had been used as a disposal site for dredge spoil in the past. This site consisted of approximately 5.0 acres of uplands, 4.4 acres of mangrove forest, and 1.4 acres of nonmangrove intertidal and subtidal habitat. The objective of the project was to establish a typical Tampa Bay mangrove forest and a roadside buffer free of exotic plant species. The secondary goals were to establish a typical Tampa Bay salt marsh dominated by smooth cordgrass (Spartina spp.) as a successional precursor to mangrove recruitment by seeds and seedlings. Tidal exchange through the site was reestablished to improve water quality and increase export of mangrove detritus and import of high-quality tidal waters. The project was designed and constructed by the RPs with the approval and supervision of the trustees. The project was completed and title transferred to Pinellas County, Florida in summer 1999. A monitoring program was developed and performance criteria established by trustee representatives and the RPs. The monitoring program currently is being conducted and has met performance criteria to date. This project demonstrates the positive result of trustees and the RPs working together to provide compensation to the environment.

Scaling Compensatory Restoration Under the 1990 Oil Pollution Act

1999 ◽  
Vol 1999 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore Tomasi ◽  
Mary Jo Kealy ◽  
Mark Rockel
Keyword(s):  
Cost Effectiveness ◽  
Oil Pollution ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Effective Solution ◽  
Scaling Technique ◽  
Restoration Project ◽  
Scaling Methods ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Continuum ◽  
Compensatory Restoration

ABSTRACT A major feature of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) is a requirement that compensation be resource-based. This paper discusses the implications of resource-based compensation and the OPA 90 preference for narrowly-defined in-kind compensation. A framework is developed for evaluating compensatory scaling methods on the basis of the applicability of the method to the restoration project and the cost-effectiveness of the solution. The framework places potential compensation projects along a continuum, which ranges from strict in-kind compensation applied to small injuries to full out-of-kind compensation applied to large injuries. This conceptual framework is used to augment the existing techniques for scaling compensatory restoration, which otherwise appear to us to be limited to addressing only projects at the two ends of the continuum. The advantages of this framework are that it (1) avoids the either/or nature of the scaling choices in the current situation by offering techniques to scale compensation projects that fall in between the two ends of the continuum, (2) protects both Responsible Parties (RPs) and trustees against charges that scaling has taken place in an arbitrary manner, and (3) provides some guidance and criteria to determine when a particular scaling technique and related studies may be appropriate and lead to the most cost-effective solution.

scholarly journals Of sets of offsets: Cumulative impacts and strategies for compensatory restoration

2015 ◽  
Vol 312 ◽  
pp. 114-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivier Thébaud ◽  
Fabio Boschetti ◽  
Sarah Jennings ◽  
Anthony D.M. Smith ◽  
Sean Pascoe
Keyword(s):  
Cumulative Impacts ◽  
Compensatory Restoration

scholarly journals INTEGRATING PRIMARY AND COMPENSATORY RESTORATION FOR AN OIL SPILL THROUGH USE OF HABITAT ENHANCEMENT

2005 ◽  
Vol 2005 (1) ◽  
pp. 1111-1115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher E. Pfeifer ◽  
Cheryl A. Hess
Keyword(s):  
New Jersey ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Fuel Oil ◽  
Marsh Vegetation ◽  
Restoration Project ◽  
The Public ◽  
Heavy Equipment ◽  
Natural Resource Damage Assessment ◽  
Habitat Enhancement ◽  
Compensatory Restoration

ABSTRACT Natural resources along the shoreline of a tidal estuary were injured by oiling and physical disturbance following the accidental release of No. 6 fuel oil from a power plant in New Jersey, USA. Operation of heavy equipment on the shoreline during the emergency response entrained oil into sediments and physically damaged shoreline vegetation dominated by the low-value specie Phragmites australis. In response to this incident, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) and the responsible party (RP) conducted a cooperative natural resource damage assessment (NRDA). During NRDA discussions, the NJDEP proposed that compensatory restoration for injured natural resources be provided at a ratio of 3:1 (restored-to-injured) based on the acreage of physically impacted vegetation. Since in-kind restoration of Phragmites was undesirable, native salt marsh vegetation was planted instead, resulting in enhancement of the injured habitat. Since the primary restoration actions yielded improvements beyond the baseline condition, the RP successfully negotiated a 1:1 replacement ratio for components involving habitat enhancement. By incorporating habitat enhancement into the design of primary restoration, the amount of the compensatory restoration was reduced. By expanding the primary restoration to include enhancement of adjoining degraded habitat that was not impacted by the incident, the RP was able to satisfy both primary and compensatory restoration obligations simultaneously by integrating these components into a single restoration project. The combined primary and compensatory restoration project was then implemented as emergency restoration 4–5 months after the incident. This integrated restoration approach enabled the RP to: (1) decrease compensatory restoration requirements by incorporating habitat enhancement into primary restoration; (2) reduce restoration costs by avoiding separate primary and compensatory restoration projects; and (3) expedite restoration by performing actions under the scope of emergency restoration. This strategy benefited the trustees by simplifying the assessment and reducing oversight burdens. The public and the environment benefited by receiving restoration on an accelerated timeframe.

ASSESSING NATURAL RESOURCE DAMAGES FOR COMMERCIALLY AND RECREATIONALLY HARVESTED POPULATIONS

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (1) ◽  
pp. 959-984
Author(s):  
Jeff Wakefield ◽  
Andrew N. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Natural Resource ◽  
Oil Pollution ◽  
Population Projections ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
Basic Premise ◽  
The Public ◽  
Demographic Rates ◽  
Baseline Demographic ◽  
Compensatory Restoration

Abstract Resource Equivalency Analysis (“REA”) is often used to “right-size” (scale) or calibrate compensatory restoration projects implemented as part of Natural Resource Damage Assessments (“NRDAs”) conducted pursuant to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (“OPA”). The basic premise underlying REA is that, if a spill results in the loss of individual members of a population, the public can be compensated via a restoration project which creates individuals that otherwise would not exist. This is because the ecological services provided by a population are proportional to the number of individuals in the population. For example, one could compensate the public for spill-related mortality among shrimp by creating wetland terraces which, the literature suggests, would increase the number of shrimp in the population. REA answers the question, “How many wetland terraces need to be created?” Implicit in the REA construct is the dynamic nature of the population projections. Even with density dependence, population levels fluctuate according to both biological and anthropogenic factors that combine to influence survival, reproductive and growth rates. Thus, if NRDA practitioners are to reliably identify compensatory restoration requirements using REA, it is necessary to: characterize baseline demographic rates; develop a model that uses those baseline demographic rates to project future population levels; and identify the mechanisms that cause post-spill rates to change relative to baseline expectations. One factor that can cause post-spill demographic rates to vary is a spill-related change in human behavior. For example, if a spill-related fishing closure results in the cancelation of 15,000 recreational shrimping trips, shrimp mortality due to fishing will decrease. In this paper we use prior OPA NRDA cases to: review the historical treatment of spill-related closures in REA models used by both DOI/USFWS and NOAA; and illustrate that the REA practitioners’ approach to these spill-related changes in human behavior can (and should) change the NRDA liability construct, particularly with respect to species which are commercially and recreationally harvested.

Challenges in Using Habitat Equivalency Analysis for Scaling Compensatory Restoration

2003 ◽  
Vol 2003 (1) ◽  
pp. 791-796 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard W. Dunford ◽  
Poh Boon Ung ◽  
Jeremy A. Cook ◽  
Gary S. Mauseth
Keyword(s):  
Natural Resource ◽  
Oil Spills ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ecological Services ◽  
Ecological Service ◽  
Habitat Equivalency Analysis ◽  
Compensatory Habitat ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Compensatory Restoration

ABSTRACT Some oil spills cause losses of ecological services in coastal wetlands, other shoreline environments, intertidal ecosystems, and upland environments. In the United States, habitat equivalency analysis (HEA) is being used frequently in natural resource damage assessments for such oil spills to determine the scale of compensatory-restoration projects needed to offset the ecological service losses. The cost of the scaled compensatory-restoration project(s) that offset the ecological service losses is the measure of natural resource damages for the lost ecological services. Our paper describes the HEA process and provides an example of its application. Then we examine several challenges that arise in some HEA applications, including the role of leasing versus purchasing compensatory habitat, increasing values of compensatory habitat over time due to decreasing availability, accounting for service gains from compensatory habitat in the distant future when the present value of those services is essentially zero, and addressing uncertainties in estimating HEA inputs (such as the magnitude of annual service losses and gains). The final section of our paper provides our conclusions with respect to these challenges.

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