|
|
Case: LA
Regional Restoration Planning Program, LA
Dates: The Regional Restoration Planning Program began in
2001.
Status: The Final Programmatic
Environmental Impact Statement and the
Regional Restoration Plan for Region 2 were jointly published in
January 2007. The Record of Decision was signed
April 30, 2007.
Location: State of Louisiana
Trustees:
Overview: Natural resource trustees act on behalf of the
public to return natural resources to the condition they would have been in if
an oil spill incident had not occurred, and to obtain compensation for interim
losses of natural resources and their services. Trustees have developed an
innovative statewide comprehensive Regional Restoration Planning (RRP) Program
to assist with their responsibilities related to discharges of oil. The
framework and the major provisions of the RRP Program are outlined in a Final
Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (FPEIS). The FPEIS divides the
State of Louisiana into nine regions, and a Regional Restoration Plan to be
developed for each will identify:
-
Trust resources and services that are likely to be injured by an oil spill,
-
Suitable restoration types for various injuries, and
-
Available projects that can be implemented at the local level.
Because of the number of activities involving oil in Louisiana, the state has a
higher likelihood of a spill than most other states. Although efforts are in
place to avoid adverse impacts to natural resources, injuries do occur. Between
1991 and 2001, Louisiana had 19% of the total oil spills in the United States
and 21% of the volume of discharges of petroleum products. The cumulative
impact of oil spills on fish, wildlife, and the environment can harm the
industries and communities that depend on natural resources for commerce and
recreation. The RRP Program’s goal is to increase the efficiency with which
trustees respond to and manage these incidents. Benefits of the program
include:
-
Reducing the cost and time required for restoration planning and
implementation.
-
Pooling individual incident recoveries to implement larger, more ecologically
significant restoration projects.
-
Providing more consistency and predictability in the natural resource damage
assessment (NRDA) process and thereby reducing uncertainty.
-
Improving coordination of restoration activities under NRDA mandates with other
restoration efforts in the state.
-
Enhancing trustee capacity to restore resources and services when there is no
viable responsible party.
-
Maximizing partnership opportunities among responsible parties, trustees, and
other coordinated restoration efforts.
-
Increasing the opportunity for public participation in the NRDA process through
pre-incident planning.
|
|
|
The Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view PDF documents.
Click on the Acrobat Reader icon to download the latest version.
|
|
|
|
