Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Science, Law & Policy
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Science, Law & Policy
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Science, Law & Policy
Donald F. Boesch
University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Deepwater Horizon
April 21, 2010
2
My Inescapable Engagement
4
Oil Spill Commission Charge
No subpoena power!
5
Major Factors Leading to Blowout
Bad communication
6
Key Findings on Causes of Explosion
7
Commission’s Recommendations
8
Drilling Safety Responses: Government
9
Congressional Gridlock
10
Industry Responses
12
Clean Water Act Civil Trial
Federal District Court
New Orleans
Moderately-heavily oiled
coastal marshes & mangroves
14
Boesch Expert Testimony: Potential Harm
15
BP Expert Witness #1
Laughing Gull
17
Global Settlement Reached
18
Natural Resource Damage Assessment
• 2-5 trillion larval fish & 37-68 trillion
invertebrates in upper water column killed
• Millions to billions of fish did not reach age 1
• >770 sq mi of deep-sea benthic habitat & 4 sq mi
of mesophotic reef habitat injured
• ggggg • 11-53% loss of marsh plant biomass over >350
mi of shoreline, some permanently; recovery 2-7
years
• Loss of 4-8.3 billion oysters over 7 years
www.gulfspillrestoration.noaa.gov/restoration-planning/gulf-plan 19
Alternate Perspective Based on Models
• Used Atlantis ecosystem model
incorporating fish growth, mortality &
recruitment
• Exposure determined from oil
transport & fate models not
observations
• Oil effects determined by dose-
Fish biomass trajectories
response model based on literature
Grouper biomass reduction
• Little impact of fisheries closures &
loss of fish larvae due to oil exposure
• Large declines in biomass (25-75%) of
many fish guilds
• Recovery from <10 to >50 yrs
• Impacts extend far beyond area oiled
Ainsworth et al. 2018. PLoS ONE 13(1) e0190840 20
Restoring Long-Degraded Ecosystems
Hypoxia
21
$20.8b BP Global Settlement
NRDA costs
5.5
False Claims Act, etc.
CWA penalty
Overview of Payments, Penalties & Damages
Natural Resource
Damages Civil Penalties Criminal Payments Others
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. 2016. Effective Monitoring to Evaluate
Ecological Restoration in the Gulf of Mexico.
Restoration Funding from Criminal Pleas & Civil Settlements
8,000,000,000
7,000,000,000
Coastal habitats
Fish
Birds
6,000,000,000 Deep benthic
Birds, turtles, mammals
5,000,000,000
Dollars
Project relevance?
Adaptive management?
• liabilities
[email protected]
www.umces.edu/don-boesch
@DonBoesch
28