QUANTIFYING THE SCALE OF RESTORATION REQUIREDTO COMPENSATE FOR THE IMPACTS OF THE NORTH CAPEOIL SPILL ON FISH AND INVERTEBRATES

摘要

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA) seeks tomake the environment and public whole for injury to or loss ofnatural resources and services as a result of a discharge of oil.This means that restoration projects implemented as part of anatural resource damage assessment (NRDA) must be of asufficient scale to produce resources and services of the sametype and quality and of comparable value to those that were lost.Services, for an NRDA, include both the ecological and humanuses of the resources. Also, the loss must be quantified from thetime of impact until the resource returns to baseline conditions-the level in the absence of the impact. This paper details a seriesof methods that may be used for scaling NRDA restorationprojects and describes how these methods were used in therestoring the injuries incurred as a result of the North Cape oilspill.