December 1, 2021 — NOAA and the Deepwater Horizon federal and state Trustee agencies recently released the 2021 Programmatic Review (PDF, 97 pages). This is the first collective review of multiple years of work across this Natural Resource Damage Assessment restoration program. It is restoring habitats, fish, and wildlife impacted by the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The comprehensive program review includes analyses of restoration data collected through 2020.
Through the end of 2020, the Trustees received approximately $2.8 billion in settlement funding. They committed approximately $2.4 billion of those funds to the planning and implementing more than 200 projects and activities. In that time period, NOAA has led or partnered with other agencies on more than 60 of them.
The review evaluated data on funding and projects focused on resources in the seven Gulf of Mexico geographies, called restoration areas. It also covers administrative and management efforts helping achieve restoration goals collaboratively, in an efficient and effective manner, with transparency and public accountability.
In an effort to identify any needed program adjustments, the review also assessed performance of the Trustees’:
- Governance structure
- Financial management
- Public engagement
- Regulatory compliance