• Marine Mammal Commission: Annual Meeting

    New Orleans 10-12 May 2011

     The General Counsel of NOAA and the official in NOAA in charge of NRDA (natural resource damage assessments) spoke; the later speaker emphasized that the NRDA process is run by a Trustee Council consisting of federal and state representatives. The thrust of the statement was that the Council was not federal-centric in that the Council works by consensus.

     It will be interesting to view how consensus is reached since the Council is composed of two federal entities and five states.

     

     The speakers emphasized that BP is not necessarily the only “responsible which will be held liable for natural resource damages.

     

     NOAA emphasized that the NRDA process is going to be very transparent in that the scientific data identifying impacts will be made public but not the trustee’s assessment of the data.

     

         As a result of statutory changes governing the NRDA process, the said process is  more bottom-up than top-down because the macro NRDA estimates are likely to result from the sum of the costs of the restoration projects.

     

        Note to Stakeholders: 

     

    Data Access Act To what extent will OMB’s overly restrictive interpretation of the Data Access Act embodied in its regulations promulgated pursuant to the said statute be expanded to allow stakeholders  greater  access to NRDA data?  The National Academy of Sciences is considering publishing a CRE statement on this matter.

     

    National Ocean Council   Will the NRDA restoration projects be subject the NOC regional councils?

     

    CRE Interactive Public Docket: Ocean Zoning  Stakeholders are encouraged to post relevant information regarding the  BP NRDA process on the CRE IPD by commenting on articles on the home page http://www.thecre.com/creipd/  or initiating a discussion on the Discussion Forum http://www.thecre.com/zoning-forum/

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