NRDAR News

The Deepwater Horizon Trustees have completed a comprehensive summary of an aerial survey of colonial waterbirds in the northern Gulf of Mexico from the Lower Laguna Madre in Texas to the Florida Keys taken from 2010-2021. The data, including 49,000 high resolution photographs are available to the public in a Avian Data Monitoring Portal.

The natural resource trustees opened a 30-day public comment period on the Devil’s Swamp Lake Superfund Site Draft Natural Resource Assessment Plan on July 3, 2024. This Draft Assessment Plan provides background information on the Devil’s Swamp Lake Superfund Site, the natural resource damage assessment and restoration process, and describes the Trustees’ proposed approach to assessing natural resource injury and determining the appropriate compensation for natural resource restoration.

The Mayflower Oil Spill NRDAR Trustees released a draft restoration plan that is now open for public comment through July 10, 2024. Concurrent with release of this draft plan, on June 3, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice lodged the Consent Decree and filed the Complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The Department of the Interior’s Office of Restoration and Damage Assessment (ORDA) invites you to join a consultation session on its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to revise the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration (NRDAR) Regulations issued in the Federal Register on January 5, 2024.

Representing a major win for habitat restoration for seabirds injured by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group released its Final Open Ocean Restoration Plan 3 (PDF, 335 pages) on September 15, 2023. The restoration plan includes seven projects, with a combined budget of $33 million, that will help restore seabirds that were injured by the oil spill and are found in the Gulf of Mexico. The projects are scheduled to begin implementation within the next year.

The Deepwater Horizon NRDAR Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group has released its Draft Restoration Plan 3 and Environmental Assessment: Birds (PDF, 304 pages) for public comment through April 28, 2023. The draft plan is available for review and in libraries and other repositories.

The Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group, the agencies charged with restoring Louisiana’s natural resources after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, has released the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Final Restoration Plan .The plan evaluates using a large-scale sediment diversion to reconnect the Mississippi River to Louisiana's Barataria Basin estuary to restore wetlands and contribute to the broader restoration of its ecosystem. If it is ultimately permitted and funded, this first-of-its-kind project, estimated to cost more than $2 billion, represents one of the largest and most innovative coastal habitat restoration efforts ever undertaken.

The Deepwater Horizon Louisiana Trustee Implementation Group is proposing the Terrebonne Houma Navigation Canal (HNC) Island Restoration project to restore birds injured by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The project is included in a draft restoration plan, which is now open for public comment through September 26, 2022.  

On March 17, 2022, the U.S Department of Justice announced completion of a settlement agreement with Taylor Energy, the company responsible for an oil spill that began in 2004. The settlement comes after the Department of Justice drafted a Consent Decree—a 60-page document that spells out the terms of the settlement—and provided a 40-day public comment.   

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustee Council has released the 2021 Programmatic Review (PDF, 97 pages) of its Gulf restoration work. The Trustees have committed to periodically re-examining the restoration program through programmatic reviews. This is the first of these efforts, and includes data collected from their work through 2020.