MassDEP summarizes 2024 Natural Resource Damages work, from settlements to restoration planning

Michelle Craddock, coordinator of the Natural Resource Damages Program at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP), presented the NRD program's highlights for calendar year 2024, outlining recent settlements, restoration-planning milestones, grant solicitations and projects moving toward implementation.

Craddock said MassDEP completed one NRD settlement in 2024 tied to a 2018 fuel release by the marine vessel Ocean King into Great Harbor in Woods Hole (Falmouth). "We settled 1 NRD claim this year," she said, and described shoreline coating, a large sheen on the harbor, temporary closure of recreational shellfish beds and injury and death to migratory birds. MassDEP entered a $100,000 NRD settlement and, working with trustee agencies including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, secured an additional $285,000 from the National Natural Resource Damages Program through the U.S. Department of the Interior to fund restoration related to that injury.

Craddock also told attendees that another settlement was expected to be made public in late December or early January and that the consent decree would be posted for public comment once finalized.

She described the formal restoration-planning process that follows joint…