Because the use of various treatment technologies can have a significant impact on a site's natural resources, careful consideration of these effects should be made when selecting technologies for cleanup. Following a site cleanup, both the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Oil Pollution Act (OPA) require that residual natural resource damages be assessed by federal, state, and/or tribal natural resource trustees, and restoration of those injured resources are to be accomplished. Restoration is generally defined as returning natural resources to their pre-incident conditions.

Through coordination among agencies responsible for cleanup and restoration (natural resource trustees, such as U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, and State Department of Natural Resources personnel), cleanup technologies can be selected that minimize the residual injury that will need to be dealt with in the Natural Resources Damage Assessment and Restoration process. To ensure that such concerns are properly considered in the selection of cleanup technologies, the DOI advises that the RPM contact the local representative of a site's resource trustee as early as possible in the selection process (e.g., the Fish and Wildlife Service). Such cooperative efforts should improve efficiency and reduce overall costs of the combined cleanup/restoration processes.