Environmental Protection

This report provides information on the Defense Department's (DOD) environmental compliance and cleanup activities, including the extent to which the military is providing required data on the cost and status of compliance projects and the relative risk characteristics that DOD uses to prioritize site cleanups. GAO found that not all the information required for compliance oversight is being provided. DOD components do not provide detailed expenditure data on compliance activities, and DOD's reports to the Environmental Protection Agency did not provide such information as whether compliance projects address existing or expected noncompliance. As for risk, DOD used a relative risk site evaluation methodology in designating 4,472 of 8,534 sites as high risk. GAO's analysis of reported data on 407 high-cost sites--including 266 considered high risk--indicates that DOD includes a range of site characteristics within its high-risk category.

GAO noted that: (1) not all the information that DOD, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Congress have identified as required for compliance oversight is being provided; (2) DOD components do not provide detailed expenditure data on compliance activities; (3) DOD's reports to EPA do not provide such information as whether compliance projects address existing or expected noncompliance; (4) in addition, some data in DOD's latest report to Congress were not complete or correct; (5) DOD used a relative risk site evaluation methodology in designating 4,472 of 8,534 sites as high-risk; (6) GAO's analysis of reported data on 407 high-cost sites, including 266 considered high risk, indicates that DOD includes a range of site characteristics within its high-risk category; (7) at 54 percent of the sites that were designated as high-risk, all three elements used by DOD to make priority determinations were reported present; (8) at the remaining 46 percent of the sites one or two of the elements, but not all three, were reported present; and (9) in addition, the reported levels of contamination at 58 of the 407 sites GAO analyzed were less than the standard DOD used to determine whether a site is contaminated.