Note to Angela Nugent

From: Ned Black, Ph.D., Regional CERCLA Ecologist/Microbiologist, US EPA
Region 9 BTAG Coordinator

Subject: Bolsa Chica introductory message

As you requested, I\'m providing a brief introduction to the Bolsa Chica
site and my thoughts on why it might be of interest to the SAB C-VPRESS.

The Bolsa Chica is a lowland area north of Huntington Beach on the coast
of southern California. Originally, the habitat was a mix of estuarine
and coastal scrub uplands. For almost a century it has been an oil
production field. However, the mix of habitats was preserved to a large
extent, albeit with arguably reduced functionality (see Attachment 1:
Figure 2-4 from the Ecological Risk Assessment). In the 1990s, a large
fund of mitigation money from expansion projects at the Ports of Los
Angeles and Long Beach became available. A consortium of federal and
State of California agencies, including the US EPA, brokered the
purchase of the Bolsa Chica with the intent of eliminating oil
production and creating a large, thriving wildlife refuge. In one sense,
the valuation of the ecosystem was determined at the outset by fiat,
i.e., the State of California had a set amount of money which could only
be used for habitat preservation or creation, and this fund was entirely
earmarked for the Bolsa Chica project.

As a result of the oil field activity, the Bolsa Chica had a widespread
but patchy distribution of diverse contaminants. I was asked to bring my
experience overseeing ecological risk assessments of Superfund sites to
the governments\' Bolsa Chica Technical Committee. We produced an
ecological risk assessment according to the Superfund model, and then
participated in negotiations with the responsible parties to set cleanup
goals. Those negotiations are partially complete. Intrinsic in the
planning and execution of the risk assessment and the subsequent
negotiations were informal analyses of the value of different habitat
blocks within the site. In the attached Figure 2-4, many of the upland
features are revealed as dikes which separate the area into cells which
are more or less hydrologically connected. To date, we have only
completed negotiations for contaminant cleanup of one part of the site
(see Section I & II of pdf document, July 9 04 SWQCBBbolsa cleanup
plan).

This site fits my understanding of the SAB C-VRESS in light of the
presentation the committee heard on 27 October 2003 from Deveraux Barnes
of the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response at EPA headquarters
(see Attachment 2: Barnes presentation). Dev told the C-VPRESS that
OSWER acknowledges the potential benefits of ecosystem valuation in
ecological risk assessment of hazardous waste sites, but does not have
the tools to include ecosystem valuation in our work. Even though the
Bolsa Chica restoration is not an OSWER project, the risk assessment and
cleanup were and are being done using the OSWER model. And habitat
valuation was included both explicitly and implicitly more than any
other site I\'ve seen. I hope the C-VPRESS can build upon the
rudimentary habitat valuation as an example for further work at Bolsa
Chica and other sites.

Finally, the C-VPRESS can find more background information about the
project at the web site for the governments\' Bolsa Chica Wetlands
Steering Committee, http://swr.ucsd.edu/hcd/bolsa.htm.

I look forward to the C-VPRESS meeting.

Ned

Attachment 1: Figure 2-4 from the Ecological Risk Assessment

![](media/image1.wmf)

Attachment 2: Perspectives from Office of Solid Waste and Emergency
Response\
\
Dev Barnes, Director, Office of Program Management

**Presentation at Initial EPA Background Workshop for the US EPA Science
Advisory Board**

**Committee on Valuing the Protection of Ecological Systems and
Services**

**October 27, 2003**

1.  **Perspectives from** **Office of Solid Waste and Emergency
    Response\
    \
    **Dev Barnes, Director, Office of Program Management

**Initial EPA Background Workshop for the US EPA Science Advisory
Board**

**Committee on Valuing the Protection of Ecological Systems and
Services**

**October 27, 2003**

2.  **Mission of Program**

-   OSWER Mission:

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-   Provide policy, guidance and direction for safely managing waste,
    preparing for, and preventing chemical and oil spills, accidents and
    emergencies, and cleaning up and reusing contaminated property

-   Provide technical assistance to all levels of government to
    establish programs that safeguard our air, water, and land from the
    uncontrolled spread of waste.

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-   Types of Decisions Made:

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-   Decisions regarding site clean-ups including remediation options

-   Regulatory decisions regarding the identification and management of
    hazardous waste and contaminated media

-   Decisions on responses to spills, accidents, or emergencies

-   Decisions on reuse of contaminated property

3.  Offices Within OSWER

-   Office of Solid Waste

-   Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation

-   Office of Emergency Prevention and Preparedness and response

-   Office of Brownfields and Redevelopment

-   Office of Underground Storage Tanks

-   Office of Program Management

-   Federal Facilities, Restoration and Reuse

-   Innovation Partnership and Communication Office

4.  **Use of Information About the Value of Ecological Systems and
    Services in Program Decision-Making and Policy Making**

-   Currently, OSWER qualitatively discusses the ecological systems and
    services affected by regulatory and remedial options.

-   The qualitative assessments are used to help describe to the
    decision-maker the benefits associated with a regulatory option and
    identify unique concerns related to ecological resources.

-   The Office has not tried to quantify the ecological benefits.

5.  **Information, Tools and Approaches Used and their
    Validity/Usefulness for Decision-Making**

-   Typically, estimate ecological effects based on a Hazard Quotient
    approach using various screening criteria.

-   Do not monetarily quantify the social costs of the ecological
    benefits or impacts.

-   Estimated impacts contribute to the wealth of information related to
    a regulatory option in the decision-making phase.

6.  **Additional Tools and Approaches Needed**

-   Presently, we do not have a suite of tools available for this type
    of benefits analysis.

-   Encourage the development of tools that assist in the development of
    ecological risk endpoints that can be quantified and tools for
    assessing non-monetary benefits.

-   Encourage the development of tools that assist in the valuation of
    items such as aesthetics, watershed values, and recreational values.

7.  **Scientific Advice on Valuing the Protection of Ecological Systems
    and Services that Would be Useful to Your Program**

-   Ecological risk methodologies that link adverse impacts to economic
    valuation techniques

-   Approaches for scaling individual/community impacts to larger scales
    (e.g., habitat and watershed impacts)

-   Monetization methodologies

-   Appropriate discount rates

-   Published reference materials