Environment, Safety, and Health

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Energy's (DOE) effectiveness in protecting its workers, the community, and the environment at three of its defense production facilities in Ohio.

GAO noted that: (1) in two previous reports, it recommended that DOE develop a system to independently verify environmental monitoring data reported by contractors; and (2) DOE did not adopt the recommendation because it believed the contractors' quality assurance programs provided an effective method for ensuring data reliability. GAO found that: (1) each Ohio contractor collects, evaluates, and reports its own radioactive air and water releases; (2) quality assurance programs help ensure that water and air samples are accurately analyzed, but do not verify that data collected are adequate; (3) each plant had environmental problems that resulted in groundwater, soil, or drinking water contamination; (4) two of the plants were not in compliance with hazardous waste laws; and (5) one of the plants was not in compliance with state permits because it had not completed two of four pollution control projects. GAO also found that: (1) the contractors did not always follow the DOE radiological monitoring guide, which recommended that they monitor on- and off-site wells to assess environmental impacts of plant operations; (2) DOE did not adopt the recommendation that it make radiological monitoring guides mandatory for all DOE facilities because it believed contractors would lose flexibility in designing their monitoring programs; (3) contractors received sizable fees even though environmental safety and health (ES&H) problems existed; and (4) DOE appraisal programs were not identifying major ES&H problems.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: