Focus session a
OIL SPILLS + OTHER ACCIDENTS
Co-chairs:
Paul D. boehm, ph.d.
Group Vice President & Principal Scientist, Exponent
Dr. Paul D. Boehm is a Principal Scientist and Group Vice President for Exponent. In this role, he has overall responsibility for Exponent’s Environmental business. During 38 years of consulting, Dr. Boehm has advised industrial, legal, and government clients on scientific matters involving site and sediment investigations; environmental fate of chemicals; environmental forensic investigations; natural resource damage assessments (NRDA) for oil spills and contaminated sites; and oil and gas geochemistry as applied to storage fields and hydrofracking. Many of his projects involve aspects of historical reconstruction of chemical releases; chemical fingerprinting; divisibility and apportionment; and chemical exposure and injury assessment. His extensive knowledge of the strategic applications of baseline data and practice of environmental chemistry and forensics have been applied to numerous cases involving complex environmental liability and litigation matters including insurance coverage. Dr. Boehm’s work has focused extensively on oil refineries, fuel terminals, oil pipelines, and offshore platforms; manufactured gas plants (MGP); land and sediment Superfund sites; pulp and paper mills; other active and legacy manufacturing sites, and natural gas storage fields.
Dr. Boehm is well-known internationally in the field of marine pollution and oil spill scientific assessment with specific emphases on environmental aspects of contaminated sediments, spill response, and NRDA. He has published extensively on the fate and effects, exposure assessment, and the environmental context for determination of injuries from major oil spills in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East (e.g., Amoco Cadiz; Haven; Ixtoc 1; Exxon Valdez; Arabian Gulf War spill; Deepwater Horizon). His work in the NRDA arena goes well beyond oils spills as he has been engaged in numerous cases at CERCLA and State sites, where in both testifying and consulting roles, he has provided expert technical support on exposure and injury assessment; the determination of baseline or background; and divisibility and the allocation of liability.
Dr. Boehm received his Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island.
For additional information, see http://www.exponent.com/paul_boehm/.
TOny Penn
Deputy division chief, noaa assessment and restoration division
Tony Penn is the Deputy Division Chief of the Assessment and Restoration Division – a component of the Damage Assessment, Remediation, and Restoration Program. He has been with NOAA working on damage assessment issues since 1997. He manages operations of the Division and works with the Division Chief on strategic planning, policy, and program management.
Formerly, Tony managed the Southeast Region of the Assessment and Restoration Division where he worked with scientists and economists to address coastal pollution and physical impacts from hazardous waste sites, oil spills, and vessel groundings from cleanup through restoration. Previous to this position, Tony was a natural resource economist conducting damage assessment work primarily in the Gulf Coast and Caribbean regions with a focus on restoration scaling, including Habitat Equivalency Analysis, and recreational impact assessment.
Tony received his B.S. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin and M.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland.
presenters:
Greg baker
Environmental Scientist, NOAA Assessment and Restoration Division
Greg Baker is an Environmental Scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He joined NOAA in 1998 and has managed Natural Resource Damage Assessments and restoration programs on numerous oil spill and waste sites for the Office of Response and Restoration. His major focus since 2010 has been the collection, analysis and interpretation of tens of thousands of samples for the assessment of oil fate and exposure for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Other cases Mr. Baker has worked on include the Duwamish River Superfund Site in Seattle, the Portland Harbor Superfund Site and New Carissa oil spill in Oregon, the Chevron Richmond Refinery and the Cosco Busan oil spill in San Francisco Bay, and the Montrose Settlements Restoration Program in southern California.
Prior to coming to NOAA Mr. Baker spent 17 years with the U.S. EPA Region 9 office in San Francisco where he managed people and programs under Superfund, RCRA, and the Clean Water Act. During his time with EPA he spent two years as the Executive Officer for the Trust Territory Environmental Protection Board in Saipan.
Mr. Baker earned an M.S. in Environmental Management from the University of San Francisco and a B.A. in Biology from the University of California San Diego.
Greg e. challenger
Principal/Marine Scientist, Polaris Applied Sciences, Inc.
Greg Challenger is a marine scientist with 30 years of experience in environmental resource management and marine and freshwater habitat assessment and restoration. Mr. Challenger has responded to over 70 oil and chemical spills, vessel casualties with Hazardous and Noxious Substances (HNS) and vessel groundings on coral reefs worldwide. In addition to scientific support for Natural Resource Damage Assessment under OPA and other international pollution regulations, Mr. Challenger has experience in a number of CERCLA cases including Portland Harbor, Oregon and The Passaic River, New Jersey.
Mr. Challenger helped form Polaris Applied Sciences in 1998 and is currently on the board of directors. He was the lead investigator for the Shoreline Natural Resource Damage Assessment for BP during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Prior to forming Polaris, Mr. Challenger taught marine resource management and coral reef ecology at the Center for Marine Resource Conservation in the Turks and Caicos, BWI, the Newfound Harbor Marine Institute in the Florida Keys, and aboard the SSV Westward in the Eastern Caribbean for the Semester at Sea program accredited by Boston University.
Mr. Challenger holds a Masters of Science in Science Education and Marine Ecology from the Florida Institute of Technology, and a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology from Florida Atlantic University.
For additional information, see http://www.polarisappliedsciences.com/about/key-personnel/greg-challenger/.
Andrew n. davis, PH.D.
Partner, Shipman & Goodwin LLP
Dr. Andrew Davis is a partner and leads the national environmental practice at Shipman & Goodwin LLP. He counsels clients in transactional, permitting, compliance, and enforcement matters under health, safety, hazardous waste, air and water pollution, site development, and property transfer laws. He provides due diligence in domestic and cross border energy, corporate and real estate transactions, and assists clients with the development and performance of environmental insurance policies, site assessments, and engineering contracts related to the investigation and remediation of “brownfield” properties.
He also assists clients with environmental auditing, reporting, record keeping, and other compliance obligations with respect to asbestos, lead, PCBs, mold, and other indoor air issues.
With his advanced degrees in marine science, he has also developed an international reputation in the area of oil and chemical spills and natural resource damages, representing some of the world’s largest shipping companies and their insurers in several marine casualty events throughout the United States, including most recently in the Gulf of Mexico, Northern Atlantic (Buzzards Bay) and Pacific (Puget Sound) Oceans, and in international waters.
Dr. Davis is a member of several national and international environmental organizations and a frequent speaker on a variety of environmental/health and safety topics. He is the author of several articles and chapters on environmental issues and has written two books: The Selling or Maintaining a Home (Owl Books/Henry Hold & Co., 1996) and ISO 14001 – Meeting Business Goals Through an Effective Environmental Management System (Simon & Schuster/Bureau of Business Practice, 1998). Andrew is also an adjunct professor of environmental studies/law and policy and Connecticut College and a Fellow at the Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment.
He earned his J.D. from George Washington University, his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his B.S. from Trinity College. He is admitted to practice in the state and federal courts in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
For additional information, see http://www.shipmangoodwin.com/adavis.
Rick dunford, PH.D.
Founder and Owner, Environmental Economics Services, LLC
Dr. Rick Dunford is the owner of Environmental Economics Services (EES), a consulting firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, specializing in natural resource damage (NRD) assessment. To date, he has worked on more than 75 NRD assessments on behalf of responsible parties.
Dr. Dunford was on the faculty in the Department of Agricultural Economics at Washington State University for nine years. He has been a full-time consultant since 1986, holding positions at the Research Triangle Institute (Research Triangle Park, NC) and Triangle Economic Research (Durham, NC) prior to forming EES in 2005.
Dr. Dunford holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
For additional information, see http://www.ees-llc.biz/content/view/25/51/.