Natural Resource Damage Assessment

The Hudson River Natural Resource Trustees are conducting a natural resource damage assessment (NRDA) of resources in the Hudson River ecosystem associated with PCB contamination of the Hudson River below Hudson Falls. Trustee agencies include the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Department of the Interior Interior/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and National Park Service (NPS). The trustees act on behalf of the public to assess and restore natural resources injured by hazardous substances. NRDA is different from EPA Superfund cleanup (see Fact Sheet: Hudson River PCBs Superfund Site Cleanup and Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration). At the Hudson River PCBs site, EPA is focusing on cleaning up or containing PCBs to reduce present and future risks to human health and the environment. In the NRDA, the Trustees are assessing the past, current and future PCB injuries to the resources in order to identify and plan restoration actions to address these injuries.