Natural Resource Damages Assessment: Valuing and Contesting NRD Injury and Damages

Measuring NRD claims is often contentious and controversial and can involve staggering costs. Indeed, NRD claims have the potential for huge liabilities under a web of federal and state laws.

NRD claims include restoration costs, equivalent resource replacement, loss of use of a resource, and assessment expenses. Assessing these damages is fact intensive and requires experts and scientific studies. The potential expense and magnitude of the claims frequently lead to litigation.

Against the spectrum of NRD claims and settlements, counsel must understand methods for determining and quantifying injury and damages. The panel will also discuss the cooperative assessment option, where parties jointly explore technical damages assessment. This can sometimes generate real efficiencies and savings.

Listen as our authoritative panel of environmental attorneys explain the process for measuring NRD. The panel will offer tactics for accomplishing each phase of valuing injury and damages, including weighing possible use of the cooperative assessment option.

1. Regulations for assessing NRD
   1. Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA)
   2. Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA)
   3. State laws
2. Injury determination
   1. Covered natural resource?
   2. Injury to resource?
   3. Connection between incident/spill and injured natural resource
3. Injury quantification
   1. Baseline condition of resource
   2. Extent or scope of injury
   3. Baseline services
   4. Recoverability of resource
   5. Reduction in services attributable to release
4. Damage determination
   1. Value of injured resource vs. cost to restore/replace resource
   2. Value of services lost
   3. Compensable value/lost use value
5. Cooperative assessment
   1. Joint technical assessment of damages
   2. Transaction costs
   3. When is it worth it?
6. Best practices

The panel will review these and other key issues:

• What are best practices for the parties to make injury determinations?
• How can the parties optimize their positions during the NRD assessment process?
• When is cooperative assessment the best option?