Resource Protection Branch

Using the Park System Resource Protection Act, the Oil Pollution Act, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, and other authorities, the Resource Protection Branch works with parks to ensure a consistent, service-wide approach to assessing injuries and developing damages for incidents that threaten or injure park resources including natural, cultural and facility resources.

Examples include motor vehicle accidents, encroachments/trespass, fires, vandalism, looting, off-road vehicles, the breach of a water diversion and transmission ditch at Rocky Mountain National Park, boat groundings at South Florida and Caribbean parks, an oil spill at the USS Arizona Memorial, and heavy metals contamination along the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.

Specifically, our functions include:

• Spill Response: Assists parks and regions in developing and implementing response plans to address oil spills, hazardous material releases, and other incidents.
• Damage Assessment: Assists parks in assessing injured resources and determining the compensation to seek for costs and damages.
• Restoration: Assists parks in planning and managing projects to restore injured resources.
• Economics: Supports Damage Assessment in quantifying compensatory restoration, and assists Social Science Branch with economic analyses.

Director's Order 14 and accompanying handbook, which establish NPS policy for implementing damage assessment and restoration activities within NPS, was signed and approved as NPS policy in 2001. The DO-14 handbook is currently being updated.

Damage Assessment and Restoration

The Resource Protection Branch is responsible for managing the NPS Damage Assessment and Restoration program. Four key statutes provide the authorities allowing NPS to recover damages for injuries to park system resources:

• The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) as amended;
• The Oil Pollution Act (OPA);
• The Clean Water Act (CWA); and
• The System Unit Resource Protection Act (SURPA, formerly known as "19jj").

The goal of a damage assessment is to seek recoveries under the applicable statutes to restore injured resources to their baseline (pre-incident) conditions.

• For small-scale, simple cases, RPB case officers advise the park staff on the damage assessment steps, guides the park in the development of required case documentation and supports the park in settlement discussion or in referral of a case for litigation.
• In large-scale, complex cases, RPB case officers provide additional assistance and often work directly on assessment and restoration planning and implementation activities in support of park and regional office staff.
• After settlement, RPB’s restoration project managers guide and facilitate restoration planning, implementation, and monitoring.

Duration:

4 minutes, 58 seconds

The video above, produced in 2018, gives a short introduction of the System Unit Resource Protection Act and its benefits to the Parks. Please contact Karen Battle via the Contact Us page for more information, or call the number in the video.