The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s (NJDEP) Natural Resource Damages (NRD) program has brought in millions of dollars, preserved thousands of acres of land and restored many acres of wetlands since 1993. The NJDEP’s NRD program hasrecently executed a landmark settlement that resolves injury to sediment and surface water through dam removal on New Jersey’s largest River.The concept of dam removal on the Raritan River was born out of the Raritan River Fish Passage Initiative, which NJDEP hosted with NOAA in 2008. At the initiative, a host of interested parties and stakeholders were invited to participate in an active discussion on the viability and desirability of constructing various forms of fish passage on the four lower dams in the Raritan River. NJDEP and NOAA often work together on injury assessments, settlement agreements, and restoration projects and can hold NRD settlement monies in joint accounts, but a series of unforeseen economic events after the initiative meeting resulted in very little available funding for fish passage. El Paso Corporation, having already settled liability with the NJDEP for ground water injuries, decided to voluntarily approach the NJDEP in 2008 to settle NRD liability for alleged sediment and surface water injuries from four industrial sites. The first task was to assess the level of injury in total and then determine the most desirable form of restoration. In this case, there is a direct nexus between sediment and surface water injury and the ecological benefits associated with dam removal. Baseline feasibility work was performed by the RP’s consultant and the NJDEP to determine the viability of dam removal on the Raritan during settlement negotiations. The NJDEP and the RP concluded that dam removal would be a feasible and effective way to settle NRD liability for injuries to sediment and surface water.