"It was an extraordinary year in OR&R. From the Sixth International Marine Debris Conference to receiving the Gold Medal for our hurricane response, from our $34 million in Natural Resource Damage Assessment settlements to creation of the Disaster Preparedness Program and from improvements to our lifesaving tools to another year with over 200 incidents, this report is just a snapshot of the great things we do every day. On behalf of OR&R, I also want to thank our leadership and incredible partners, as we could not have done this without their commitment and support. As I wrap up my career in NOAA, I have been humbled and honored to witness the incredible innovation, extraordinary capability, exemplary camaraderie and extreme dedication of our team. I thank you for standing ready every day and know the future will be even brighter. I proudly present this year’s accomplishments report."

~OR&R Director Dave Westerholm

The Office of Response and Restoration's Assessment and Restoration Division (ARD) is responsible for evaluating and restoring coastal and estuarine habitats damaged by hazardous waste releases, oil spills, and vessel groundings.

Working with partners, ARD, through NOAA's Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program, determines the harm to the environment and defines the amount of restoration required to compensate the American public for those impacts.

DIVER, OR&R’s data management application, and ERMA, a mapping tool, both received improvements this year to enhance usability.

Upgrades to DIVER include the public release of validated chemistry data for all regions, an updated functionality release for the file collections and dataset templates, as well as a now publicly posted  Environmental Data Specification section and the creation of a new download section for guidelines, sampling forms, protocols developed by the Field Assessment and Support Techniques team. During FY18, over 170,000 records were added to DIVER.

ERMA has also been significantly updated and now offers the ability to load and manage image files and GIS data. ERMA is also integrated within OR&R and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service to allow for automatic ingestion of ResponseLink activities and NESDIS marine pollution surveillance reports.

Created by NOAA’s National Ocean Service in 2018, the Disaster Preparedness Program is the latest addition to the Office of Response and Restoration. The program expands on the activity of the Gulf of Mexico Disaster Response Center, and coordinates current operational capabilities and knowledge from across NOS and NOAA to ensure that commerce, communities, and natural resources can recover as quickly as possible.

The program is dedicated to providing services that allow NOS and our partners to move through the preparedness cycle efficiently, safely and effectively — including creating and modifying NOS emergency plans for continuity of operations, providing training and exercises to improve preparedness and response posture, and serving in an incident coordination role during natural disasters and other emergencies.

The OR&R Disaster Preparedness Program (DPP) conducted two critical preparedness exercises in FY18 for NOS programs and NOAA partners. The program designed and executed a two-day exercise that paralleled and tied to the NOAA-wide Eagle Horizon exercise and FEMA’s Capstone National Level Exercise. This exercise was designed to assess NOS continuity of operations (COOP) and mission response capabilities should the National Capital Region be hit by a major hurricane. The exercise highlighted important improvements to NOS COOP planning that the DPP will be responsible for implementing.

In July, the DPP led the Pacific Regional Team through a two-day exercise that simulated a hurricane impacting Hawaii. The team focused on their plans and procedures related to personnel, mission, and infrastructure/asset preparedness. With a better sense of how to coordinate and react during an emergency event, the team used their knowledge less than two weeks later when Hurricane Hector skirted just south of  the Hawaiian Islands.

The Office of Response and Restoration's Emergency Response Division (ERD) supports the U.S. Coast Guard by providing round-the-clock scientific expertise for oil and chemical spills in marine and coastal waters.

ERD's efforts facilitate spill prevention, preparedness, response, and restoration through its network of scientific support coordinators; a Seattle-based support team of scientists, technical experts, and software developers; and federal, state, and academic partners.

The CAMEO® software suite team produces life-saving products for emergency responders and planners. In FY18, eight releases provided users with new features, security and speed enhancements, and key data upgrades.

An updated CAMEO Chemicals hazardous chemical database included new app features, such as advanced search, an import tool, and a view history feature. Two versions of the MARPLOT® mapping tool were also released with many new and highly requested features, such as the ability to move objects between layers and new import file types to improve interoperability between mapping programs. Also, the annual regulatory updates to Tier2 Submit and CAMEOfm included new physical and health hazard categories that match the revised chemical safety data sheet options.

The CAMEO suite products, developed jointly by NOAA and the Environmental Protection Agency, were downloaded over 173,000 times and the CAMEO Chemicals website had over 3.7 million pageviews in FY18.

The NOAA Marine Debris Program leads national efforts to research, prevent, and reduce the adverse impacts of marine debris on the United States economy, the marine environment, and navigation safety.

The Marine Debris Program’s team is positioned across the country and supports Great Lakes and coastal marine debris projects and action planning in partnership with state and local agencies, tribes, nongovernmental organizations, academia, and industry. The program also spearheads national research efforts, leads interagency coordination on marine debris, responds to severe weather events, and supports marine debris removal and prevention efforts.

Hurricanes, tropical storms, tsunamis, floods, and landslides can introduce immense quantities of debris into the marine environment, including large debris items such as furniture, appliances, and even entire homes. The 2017 hurricane season left a swath of destruction and significant amounts of marine debris over large areas of the Caribbean, Southeast, and Texas. The NOAA Marine Debris Program provided technical assistance to local, state, and federal partners during responses to hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. NOAA’s Marine Debris regional coordinators functioned as the statewide natural resource advisor coordinator during four separate rotations. NOAA's Florida Marine Debris Emergency Response Guide was also utilized to determine agency jurisdiction for debris issues and determine necessary consultations with other agencies. In early 2018, NOAA received $18 million in disaster relief funding to aid in coastal recovery efforts by supporting marine debris assessment, removal, and disposal in the impacted areas of Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.