NOAA and the natural resource trustees for the M/V Presidente Rivera Oil Spill approved a final amendment to a previously approved restoration plan from 1996 (PDF, 23 pages).

In the Final Amendment to the M/V Presidente Rivera 1996 Restoration Plan (PDF, 25 pages), the Trustees are replacing a previously selected project -- the restoration of degraded marshes on an acquired property -- with a new habitat restoration and public access project. The selected project would use the approximately $700,000 in remaining settlement funds for shoreline/wetlands habitat restoration and public access features of the proposed Cramer Hill Waterfront Park Project, located on the site of the Harrison Avenue Landfill in Camden, NJ, to compensate the public for injured natural resources and services resulting from the 1989 M/V Presidente Rivera oil spill. 

The previously approved project is no longer feasible. The habitat restoration and public access project is a suitable and comparable restoration alternative that would compensate the public for injured natural resources and services in the vicinity of the spill.

Restoration activities include channel and streambank construction, channel substrate placement (sand, gravel, and cobble), planting native plant species along the channel banks and adjacent wetlands, and construction of a launch to provide access to the newly constructed tidal channels and the nearby Cooper River.

The M/V Presidente Rivera ran aground in June of 1989 and the incident resulted in approximately 255,000 gallons of No. 6 fuel oil to be spilled into the Delaware River near Marcus Hook, PA. River and tidal currents spread the spill twenty-nine miles along the Delaware River shoreline affecting New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania.

Trustees leading restoration after the oil spill include NOAA, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and Energy, and Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.

For more information please contact Rich Takacs at rich.takacs@noaa.gov.