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NOV. 12, 2024 — Over the past year, the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) Disaster Preparedness Program (DPP) and the Coastal Response Research Center at the University of New Hampshire partnered with Louisiana Sea Grant to launch a series of resources to assist communities following natural disasters.
OR&R Weekly Report
The Office of Response and Restoration publishes this weekly round-up of news and information of interest to our partners, stakeholders, and team members. Click to subscribe
NOV. 12, 2024 — Staff from the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) Assessment and Restoration Division and Emergency Response Division attended the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) North America annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas from October 20–24, 2024. Attended by more than 1,500 scientists, the conference included 1,088 presentations—21 of which were co-authored by NOAA scientists—across 184 scientific sessions.
NOV. 12, 2024 — The NOAA Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) welcomed four interns from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES): Jalynn Aaron and Kayla Brown, both majoring in psychology, and Mikaela Blackwood and Amari Dupree, both majoring in biology. From this November 2024 through April 2025, interns will remotely support OR&R’s Assessment and Restoration Division with work on natural resource damage assessment and restoration.
August 2021
AUGUST 9, 2021 ─ On July 29, 2021, federal co-trustees, NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released the Final Early Restoration Plan and Environmental Assessment that calls for building a 5-acre park along the Lower Passaic River in East Newark, New Jersey.
AUGUST 2, 2021 ─ OR&R is pleased to have Mr. Felix Lopez an ecologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Caribbean Field Office. Felix is here to talk about the Section 7 Consultations of the Endangered Species Act. This section is to ensure Federal Agencies do not harm or jeopardize any endangered species when they perform or fund cleanup/response efforts in the wake of spills or natural disasters.
AUGUST 2, 2021 ─ On July 17, the Marine Debris Program (MDP) Director Nancy Wallace, Mid-Atlantic Regional Coordinator Christy Kehoe, and Marine Debris Monitoring Coordinator Hillary Burgess presented at a virtual 2021 Mid-Atlantic Marine Debris Summit. The three-day Summit brought together over 475 attendees from Mid-Atlantic regional entities working on marine debris, including state and federal agencies, tribes, non-profit organizations, academia, and other groups.
AUGUST 2, 2021 ─ After much hard work, determination and dedication, OR&R’s Disaster Preparedness Program along with support from Genwest, completed its first ever Virtual NOAA Intermediate Incident Command System for expanding incidents (ICS 300) course on July19-22. We had 12 excellent students participating from across NOAA including three NOAA line offices (NOS, OAR, OMAO) and the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer (OCAO).
AUGUST 2, 2021 ─ Subpart J of the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan (NCP) directs EPA to prepare a schedule of dispersants, other chemicals, and oil spill mitigating devices and substances that may be used to remove or control oil discharges.
AUGUST 2, 2021 ─ On July 22, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) received notification of crude oil seeping into sensitive marsh habitat from a large storage tank struck by a bullet in Bayou Hermitage, Louisiana. USCG ventured onsite to discover not just the leaking oil storage tank, but several additional tanks, barges and abandoned containers left to the mercy of Mother Nature.
July 2021
JULY 26, 2021 ─ On July 19, the Department of Justice announced filing for public comment of a consent decree proposing a $2.1 million settlement value to restore for natural resource damages for the Bayport Channel oil spill in Texas.
JULY 26, 2021 ─ On May 11, 2016, on Green Canyon Block 248, 97 miles off the coast of Louisiana, a crude oil spill from a well-head flow line resulted in the discharge of 80,892 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
JULY 26, 2021 ─ On July 17, the Marine Debris Program Education Specialist Alexandria Brake and Mid-Atlantic Regional Coordinator Christy Kehoe presented at a virtual Virginia Association for Environmental Education (VAEE) Mini-Conference Series: Summer on the Shore.
JULY 26, 2021 ─ During June and July 2021, the joint OR&R and University of New Hampshire Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC) and UNH School of Marine Science and Ocean Engineering hosted undergraduate interns from the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez and a student from Mauritius studying at Gustavo Adolphus College to work on a variety of research projects, several conducted by the center for OR&R. The research topics include oil thickness, marine oil snow, oil and ice modeling, and microplastics research.
JULY 19, 2021 ─ Imagine you are sitting on the beautiful white sand beach in Waikiki on the Island of Oahu. The sun is out, the water is warm, you have a drink in your hand, you see the tide start to move out and swells start to settle, and then…
JULY 19, 2021 ─ Last week NOAA and partners concluded a comprehensive fish sampling effort to evaluate the relationship between contaminant concentrations and the growth of fish at the Portland Harbor Superfund site.
JULY 19, 2021 ─ On July 14, the Marine Debris Program Education Specialist, Alexandria Brake, and Northeast Regional Coordinator, Demi Fox, led a workshop at the National Marine Educators Association 2021 Virtual Conference.
JULY 19, 2021 ─ The week of July 12, OR&R led a Congressional briefing highlighting 30 years of NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program’s (DARRP) work restoring the environment after marine pollution. Attendees learned about how NOAA has recovered $10.5 B from polluters through settlements and heard from restoration partners how those funds are being leveraged to benefit ecosystems, communities, and economies across the country.
JULY 19, 2021 ─ The week of July 12, a team of NOAA scientists and partners published a new study about juvenile Chinook salmon in the Lower Willamette River as part of our work on the Portland Harbor Superfund Site. This research shines light on the impacts of pollution on young salmon outmigrating through the Lower Willamette River enroute to the ocean from the tributaries where they were spawned.
JULY 19, 2021 ─ On July 13, the Marine Debris Program (MDP) Mid-Atlantic Regional Coordinator Christy Kehoe presented at a virtual Elizabeth River Project Habitat Quality meeting. The Elizabeth River Project is a non-profit based in Virginia with a mission to restore the Elizabeth River to the highest practical level of environmental quality through government, business, and community partnerships.
JULY 12, 2021 ─ 2021 marks 30 years of NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration (DARRP) program, a matrix program across National Marine Fishery Service’s Office of Habitat Conservation, NOAA General Counsel for Natural Resources, and OR&R’s Assessment and Restoration Division (ARD).
JULY 12, 2021 ─ The Disaster Preparedness Program (DPP) recently finalized its FY22-26 Strategic Plan. This is the second strategic plan for the DPP, which marks the three-year point for the program. The DPP has been growing in a slow, steady, and deliberative way. Additions to our portfolio over the last three years include recovery and regional support.
JULY 12, 2021 ─ On June 24, OR&R Director Scott Lundgren represented Department of Commerce/NOAA in an exercise of the Spill of National Significance (SONS) Strategic Coordination Call (SSCC) held at the Operations Deputy-level. He was joined by other program staff and NOAA and Department of Commerce operations centers.
JULY 12, 2021 ─ On July 6, the NOAA Marine Debris Program’s (MDP) Pacific Island Regional Coordinator, Mark Manuel, began mentoring Abigail Lewine, a 2021 Hollings Prep Program intern. The Hollings Prep Program is a pilot program that seeks to build a pool of diverse candidates (particularly those from underrepresented groups) for NOAA scholarship and fellowship programs.
JULY 12, 2021 ─ Thirty-two years after the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Alan Mearns (retired, scientist emeritus) reports that volunteers are resuming visits this summer to NOAA long term rocky intertidal monitoring sites in western Prince William Sound.
JULY 12, 2021 ─ The week of July 6, LT Rachel Pryor began planning for the Great Lakes Harmful Algal Bloom (HABs) workshop to be held in January 2023. LT Pryor is capitalizing on the momentum built from a successful HABs workshop based in the Gulf of Mexico that occurred this past April.
NOAA, and the state and federal Trustees working on restoring habitat and resources impacted by the Refugio Beach oil spill near Santa Barbara, have released a Final Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan and Environmental Assessment (PDF, 183 pages).
JULY 6, 2021 ─ On the afternoons of June 29 and 30, the Disaster Preparedness Program (DPP) partnered with the Gulf of Mexico Regional Collaboration Team to hold a virtual tabletop exercise. Named “Coastal Chaos,” this exercise was designed to bring regional NOAA Gulf of Mexico entities together to improve coordination, communication, and collaboration.
JULY 6, 2021 ─ On June 29, the journal Frontiers in Marine Science published an article co-authored by the Marine Debris Program. Entitled “Microplastics in Invasive Freshwater Mussels (Dreissena sp.): Spatiotemporal Variation and Occurrence With Chemical Contaminants,” the study measured microplastics and chemical contaminants in mussel tissue from Milwaukee Harbor harvested from reference locations and sites influenced by wastewater effluent and urban river discharge.
JULY 6, 2021 ─ A new ArcGIS Story Map explores NOAA’s Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration (DARRP) Program’s work in each state and territory. This easy-to-use new tool breaks down the $10.5 billion DARRP has recovered from pollution settlements, what resources are benefiting from restoration projects, and where we’re actively working today.
June 2021
June 28, 2021 ─ On June 21 and 23, the OR&R Disaster Preparedness Program (DPP) hosted its annual Hurricane Preparedness Summit. The two-day conference, which was facilitated by the University of New Hampshire’s Coastal Response Research Center (CRRC) covered a range of hurricane preparedness and response topics.
JUNE 28, 2021 ─ The Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force—an organization comprised of representatives from state and provincial environmental agencies in the Pacific coastal area—collects and shares data on oil spills, coordinates oil spill prevention projects, and promote regulatory safeguards to improve prevention, preparation, and response to oil spills on a state and provincial level.
JUNE 28, 2021 ─ On June 24, the Marine Debris Program’s (MDP) Monitoring Coordinator Hillary Burgess was featured on the National Children’s Museum podcast STEAM Daydream.
JUNE 21, 2021 ─ On June 16-17, Lieutenant Commander Faith Knighton, Scientific Support Coordinator (SSC) for the Pacific Northwest, participated in the Non-Floating Oil Spill Response Workshop.