Environmental Analysis Tools - Environmental Impact Analysis: Process and Methods - page 295

site is faced with a current condition where the impact has already occurred.
The challenge of the risk assessment is to determine what the preimpacted
condition was and then quantifying the change that has already occurred.
As demonstrated in the AJ Mine case study, this difference does not prevent
the use of ecological risk assessment in environmental analysis if adaptations
are made to both risk assessment and environmental analysis processes. In
fact, both can benefit from the integration of the two.

7.3 Net Environmental Benefit Analysis (NEBA)

The national attention to hazardous waste cleanup spawned not only eco-
logical risk assessment as an environmental evaluation tool, but also NEBA.
The concept and need to consider the net benefit to the environment arose
simultaneously from two aspects of hazardous waste cleanup, one regula-
tory and the other technical. The regulatory need resulted from a require-
ment in the CERCLA or the Superfund law [CERCLA §107(a)(4)CC)] and also
in the Clean Water Act that parties responsible for causing environmental
damage provide retribution to the public for the environmental damage
resulting from their actions, intentional or not. As part of CERCLA [Section
301(c)], the president was required to develop procedures for natural resource
damages evaluation which President Reagan addressed by Executive Order
12316 signed in August 1981 delegating the authority to the Department
of the Interior. The procedures developed called for a Natural Resource
Damage Assessment (NRDA) in response to a Natural Resource Damage
Claim by the trustees (state, indigenous tribes, or federal resource agencies)
of the affected environmental resource. The requirements specified that the
retribution had to be an ecological value and could not be a simple pay-
ment to the agency responsible for stewardship of the damaged ecological
resource for their operating budget or unconstrained use. Thus there was
a need, which as discussed below can be filled by NEBA, for tools to deter-
mine the extent of damage and the scope of required ecological restoration.
The technical impetus for NEBA was also twofold. One resulted from
cleanup efforts that were actually causing more damage to sensitive eco-
logical resources than the damage caused by the ongoing contamination.
The classic example is the initial cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in
Alaska when large and numerous cleanup teams used pressurized hot
water to wash oil from the intertidal zone. The “washing” effort resulted in
the combined oil and hot water migrating to the productive and sensitive
subtidal zone where the ecological damage exceeded the consequences of
leaving the oil in the intertidal area and encouraging gradual natural atten-
uation (Burger et al. 2003, Efroymson et al. 2004). Thus a tool was needed
to assist in determining “how clean is clean” and at what ecological cost,
again a need that can often be served by NEBA.