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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Damage assessment at waste sites: What are the trustees thinking?

Conference ·
OSTI ID:442860
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) provides legislative authority under which natural resource trustees assess damages for natural resources that sustain injury from hazardous materials releases. The Department of the Interior has promulgated regulations for Trustees to use in assessing injury, determining damages, and deciding how to restore or replace injured resources. CERCLA stipulates that all damages recovered from responsible parties must be used to restore, rehabilitate, or acquire the equivalent of the injured resource. This presentation will briefly review the CERCLA regulatory framework as a foundation to explain the concepts of primary and compensatory restoration and show how trustees can use resource equivalency analysis to determine how much restoration is needed to address injuries. Specific examples from damage assessment cases will be used to show that, in some instances, resource equivalency provides a feasible approach for assessing damages, reducing assessment costs, and providing an effective framework for settlement discussions.
OSTI ID:
442860
Report Number(s):
CONF-961149--
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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