Summary of Best Practices for Restoring Natural Resources Impacted by Hazardous Waste Release or Oil Spill

Stoel Rives partner Joan Snyder collaborated with author Barbara J. Goldsmith in the publication of an article in the Daily Environment Report™ titled ”Beyond the Headlines: Best Practices to Restore Natural Resources Injured by Long-Term Hazardous Waste Releases, Oil Spills and Transport and Other Accidents.” The article discusses guiding principles and best practices for natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) and related restoration of natural resources, and the services or uses the public gains from them, after the release of hazardous waste or an oil spill. Snyder is a member of the NRDA Best Practices Working Group, which published a series of NRDA best practices described in the article.

Specifically, the Working Group developed seven guiding principles, based on collective experience gained by the multi-stakeholder NRD practice community from 1980 to the present, intended to promote consistency of response from site to site nationwide. Guiding principles range from the overall objective of NRDA and restoration being the achievement of “timely and cost-effective restoration of natural resources services to their baseline” to facilitating a transparent NRDA process that allows for the involvement of potentially responsible parties throughout.

The article provides suggested standards of practice for each guiding principle and case and/or site examples for each.

Read “Beyond the Headlines: Best Practices to Restore Natural Resources Injured by Long-Term Hazardous Waste Releases, Oil Spills and Transport and Other Accidents (PDF),” published August 18, 2014.

Reproduced with permission from Daily Environment Report™, 14 DEN 159, 08/18/2014. Copyright © 2014 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (800-372-1033) http://www.bna.com.