An accidental discharge of oil from the Motor Vessel FORTUNE EPOCH in the vicinity of Savannah, Georgia occurred in November 2004 (Spill). The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, acting as natural resource trustees (Trustees), determined that natural resources were injured as a result of the Spill. A damage assessment for natural resource injuries was conducted by the Trustees with participation from the Responsible Party (RP), the Fukunaga Kaiun Co. Ltd.

Based on the results of the natural resource damage assessment, a settlement agreement among the Trustees and the RP was reached and became effective on February 26th, 2018. From this agreement, $620,894.64 was recovered to implement restoration actions to restore natural resources injured by the Spill.

The Trustees developed a Draft Damage Assessment and Restoration Plan and Environmental Assessment (Draft DARP/EA) for the Spill. The Draft DARP/EA summarized the Trustees’ assessment of the natural resource injuries caused by the Spill and evaluated several potential restoration alternatives for the restoration of injured natural resources.

A proposed restoration alternative was identified in the Draft DARP/EA and involved the restoration of tidal exchange at several locations on Ossabaw Island, Georgia through the replacement of undersized culverts with adequately-sized bridges. In addition to evaluating the potential for the proposed restoration alternative to restore injured natural resources, the EA portion of the Draft DARP/EA satisfied the Federal Trustee’s requirement to evaluate impacts to the human environment from the proposed restoration alternative identified in the document under the National Environmental Policy Act.

The Draft DARP/EA was made available for public review and comment from May 20th, 2018 until June 20th, 2018. No public comments were received. The USFWS issued a Finding of No Significant Impact for the proposed restoration actions on October 15th, 2018. A Final DARP/EA was published on November 14th, 2018 and is available below under "documents".