Waste Cleanup
Status and Implications of DOE's Compliance Agreements
Gao ID: GAO-02-567 May 30, 2002
The Department of Energy (DOE) spends between $6 billion and $7 billion annually to store, clean up, and monitor nuclear and hazardous waste at its sites. Various federal and state agencies with jurisdiction over environmental and health issues related to the cleanup are therefore involved in regulating and overseeing DOE's activities. Much of the cleanup activity has been implemented under compliance agreements between the DOE and these agencies. There are three types of compliance agreements governing DOE's sites: (1) legal requirements that address the cleanup of federal sites on the National Priorities List of the nation's most serious hazardous waste sites or that address treatment and storage of mixed hazardous and radioactive waste at DOE facilities; (2) court-ordered agreements resulting from lawsuits initiated primarily by states; and (3) other agreements, such as state administrative orders enforcing state hazardous waste management laws, that do not fall into the first two categories. Through the end of fiscal year 2001, DOE had completed 4,500 milestones, although for several reasons, the number of milestones is not a good indication of cleanup progress. Many of the milestones are administrative in nature, such as issuing a report. Also, some agreements allow for adding more milestones as time goes on, and because the total number of milestones associated with those agreements is not yet known, progress is difficult to determine. Finally, many of the milestones not yet due involve some of the most complex and costly cleanup work to be undertaken. The cost of complying with these agreements is not specifically identified in the DOE budget. Individual DOE sites include the cost of the compliance when preparing their initial budget requests, but as DOE headquarters officials adjust individual site estimates to reflect national priorities and to reconcile various competing demands, the final budget does not identify what portion of the request reflects compliance requirements. However, compliance agreements are site-specific and are not intended to provide a mechanism for DOE to use in prioritizing risks among various sites.
GAO-02-567, Waste Cleanup: Status and Implications of DOE's Compliance Agreements
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United States General Accounting Office:
GAO:
Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives.
May 2002:
Waste Cleanup:
Status and Implications of DOE‘s Compliance Agreements:
GAO-02-567:
Contents:
Letter:
Results in Brief:
Background:
Compliance Agreements Are of Three Main Types:
Most Milestone Dates Have Been Met, but Meeting Milestones Is Not a
Good Measure of Cleanup Progress:
DOE‘s Budget Request Does Not Identify the Funding Needed to Meet
Compliance Requirements:
Compliance Agreements Are Site Specific and Do Not Allow for Managing
Risks across DOE Sites:
Compliance Agreements Were Not a Barrier to Past Management
Improvements, but Impact on February 2002 Initiative Is Unclear:
Conclusions:
Agency Comments:
Appendix I: Compliance Orders and Agreements Affecting DOE‘s
Environmental Management Cleanup Program:
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Energy:
Appendix III: Scope and Methodology:
Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
Tables:
Table 1: Types of DOE Compliance Agreements and Related Schedule
Milestones:
Table 2: Information on Compliance Agreement Milestones at DOE‘s Six
Largest Cleanup Sites:
Table 3: Number of Compliance Agreement Missed Milestones and Monetary
Penalties Paid at DOE Sites:
Table 4: Cost of Meeting Compliance Requirements under Two Different
Budget Scenarios at Four DOE Sites, Fiscal Year 2002:
[End of section]
United States General Accounting Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
May 30, 2002:
The Honorable James C. Greenwood:
Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations:
Committee on Energy and Commerce:
House of Representatives:
Dear Mr. Chairman:
The Department of Energy (DOE) spends between $6 billion and $7 billion
annually to store, clean up, and monitor nuclear and hazardous waste at
its sites around the country. This waste is primarily a result of more
than 50 years of producing material for the nation‘s nuclear weapons
program. It ranges from millions of gallons of high-level liquid
radioactive waste in underground storage tanks to solvents, oils, and
hazardous chemicals in covered pits and trenches. At many of its sites,
DOE has had difficulty making significant progress on the cleanup,
particularly for the most dangerous wastes. Until recently, DOE‘s plan
for cleaning up every site was expected to cost a total of about $220
billion and take at least 70 years.
The processes that govern the cleanup at DOE‘s nuclear waste sites are
complicated, involving multiple laws, agencies, and administrative
steps. DOE‘s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is responsible for
much of the actual cleanup activity, which is carried out primarily
under two federal laws”the Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, as amended (CERCLA), and the
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976, as amended (RCRA).
CERCLA addresses the cleanup of hazardous substances at inactive or
abandoned sites, some of which are listed on the National Priorities
List of the nation‘s most serious hazardous waste sites; RCRA regulates
the treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste and the cleanup
of hazardous waste released from covered facilities. Various federal
and state agencies have jurisdiction over environmental and health
issues involved with the cleanup and are therefore involved in
regulating and overseeing DOE‘s activities. Over the years, much of the
cleanup activity has been implemented under compliance agreements
between DOE and these agencies.[Footnote 1] Compliance agreements
provide for establishing legally enforceable schedule milestones that
govern the work to be done. Regulators and DOE can negotiate to amend
or modify the agreements, including extending or eliminating milestone
dates. Regulators can also impose monetary or other penalties for
missing milestones. Some agreements cover virtually all cleanup
activities at a site, while others cover just a portion of the
activities. Most of DOE‘s major sites have more than one agreement in
place.
Because the compliance agreements are so varied and numerous, their
effect on DOE‘s cleanup program can be difficult to ascertain. You asked
us to address four questions with regard to these agreements:
* What are the major types of compliance agreements?
* What progress is DOE making in complying with milestones specified in
the agreements?
* To what extent is the cost to comply with these agreements reflected
in the DOE budget submitted to the Congress?
* To what extent do these agreements allow DOE to prioritize work across
sites according to the relative risk posed by the various wastes?
As we were conducting our work, the Secretary of Energy announced a
new DOE initiative aimed at improving management of the cleanup
program, shortening the program‘s life by at least 30 years, and
reducing program costs by at least $100 billion. Under this initiative,
DOE would accelerate cleanup projects at some sites; revise other
cleanup plans, such as reclassifying certain waste to different risk
categories to speed cleanup and reduce cost; and concentrate funding
more on cleanup and less on maintenance and non-cleanup activities.
Because the detailed proposals to come from this initiative were still
being developed at the time of this report, we cannot determine
specifically how the existing compliance agreements will affect DOE‘s
ability to implement the new initiative. As agreed with your office,
however, we do offer some general observations about the possible
implications of compliance agreements on DOE‘s efforts to improve its
cleanup program.
Among the steps taken to respond to this request, we administered a
questionnaire to DOE‘s sites with compliance agreements. We also
conducted fieldwork at DOE headquarters and four of the department‘s
largest environmental management program offices”the Richland, Idaho,
Oak Ridge, and Savannah River operations offices. For a complete
discussion of our scope and methodology, see appendix III.
Results in Brief:
There are three main types of compliance agreements governing cleanup
at DOE‘s sites: (1) agreements required by CERCLA to address cleanup of
federal sites on EPA‘s National Priorities List of the nation‘s most
serious hazardous waste sites or by RCRA to address treatment and
storage of mixed hazardous and radioactive waste at DOE facilities, (2)
court-ordered agreements resulting from lawsuits initiated primarily by
states, and (3) other agreements, such as state administrative orders
enforcing state hazardous waste management laws, that do not fall into
the first two categories. The 70 compliance agreements we identified
are in place at 23 DOE waste cleanup sites, which together account for
about 74 percent of DOE‘s projected total cleanup costs. Many large DOE
installations, such as the Hanford site in Washington State and the
Savannah River site in South Carolina, have all three types of
agreements. In total, the 70 agreements contain almost 7,200 separate
milestones, which range from requiring a specific cleanup activity,
such as remediating groundwater contamination in a given area, to
requiring that a step be completed that will contribute to eventual
cleanup, such as obtaining a permit.
Through the end of fiscal year 2001, DOE had completed more than 4,500
milestones, although for several reasons, the number of milestones
completed is not a good measure of cleanup progress. First, many of the
milestones are administrative in nature, such as issuing a report.
Second, some agreements allow for adding more milestones as time goes
on, and because the total number of milestones associated with those
agreements is not yet known, the relative progress made is difficult to
determine. Finally, many of the milestones not yet due involve some of
the most technically complex and costly cleanup work to be undertaken.
DOE met the original milestone date for about 80 percent of the
completed milestones. When DOE missed a schedule milestone, regulators
seldom exercised their authority to impose penalties and they almost
always renegotiated milestone deadlines if DOE requested that they do
so. Regulators sometimes required DOE to perform additional work sooner
than had been planned in addition to or instead of paying a monetary
penalty. Regulators at the four sites we visited indicated that while
they generally have been willing to be collaborative and flexible about
changing milestone dates thus far, adequate funding of the cleanup
program was essential to their continued flexibility. At one site we
visited, we found indications that DOE‘s concerns about making progress
led it to choose not to pursue potentially less expensive ways to
accomplish certain tasks, because these alternatives would cause DOE to
miss a sensitive or significant milestone.
The cost of complying with these agreements is not specifically
identified in the DOE budget submitted to the Congress. Individual DOE
sites include the cost of compliance when preparing their initial budget
requests, but as DOE headquarters officials adjust individual site
estimates to reflect national priorities and to reconcile various
competing demands, the final budget request does not identify what
portion of the request is intended to address compliance requirements.
DOE is not required to develop or present this information to the
Congress. The President‘s budget typically states that the DOE funding
requested is sufficient to substantially comply with compliance
agreements, but does not state the amount of funding needed for
compliance. Even if it were possible to identify this amount in the
final budget, the figure would have limited significance, because
sites‘ compliance estimates are based primarily on the expected size of
the budget. If the funding sites receive is insufficient to accomplish
all of the compliance activities planned for that year, sites must
decide which activities to defer to future years. In contrast, if sites
receive more funding than anticipated in a particular year, they have an
opportunity to increase the amount of money spent on compliance
requirements.
Compliance agreements are site-specific and are not intended to provide
a mechanism for DOE to use in prioritizing risks among the various
sites. The agreements reflect local DOE and community priorities for
addressing environmental contamination at individual sites and were not
developed to consider environmental risk from a DOE-wide perspective.
DOE has made several attempts to develop a risk-based methodology
across its sites, but has not succeeded because of problems such as its
failure to integrate any of the approaches into the decision-making
process. Rather than prioritize risk across sites, DOE has attempted to
provide a relatively stable amount of funding at each site from year to
year and generally allow local DOE managers and the community to
determine the priorities for sequencing work at each site. However,
DOE‘s current initiative for improving the program calls for such a
risk-based approach. A central component of this approach includes
developing risk-reduction priorities and concentrating its efforts on
activities that contribute to risk reduction. DOE‘s environmental
management program is currently evaluating how best to proceed in
developing the risk-based strategy. Because this effort is currently
underway, it is too early to determine if it will yield results that
regulators and other stakeholders at the various sites can accept as
reliable.
Compliance agreements have not been a barrier to previous DOE
management improvement initiatives, but it is not clear if the
compliance agreements will be used to oppose DOE‘s latest initiative,
which could have a potentially greater impact on cleanup approaches and
funding levels than prior initiatives. DOE‘s past management improvement
initiatives generally have not involved significant changes in cleanup
approach or significant reductions in funding at individual sites. For
example, DOE‘s contract reform initiative did not prescribe technical
changes to cleanup approaches and the privatization initiative did not
result in significant reductions in funding. Regulators generally
supported these initiatives, saying that they support efforts to
implement faster, less costly ways to reduce the environmental risks at
the sites, as long as DOE‘s approach did not reduce funding for
individual sites. DOE‘s recent initiative, however, has the potential
to alter the funding balance among DOE sites. In some cases it involves
potential changes in technology or approach that would result in
leaving more waste on site than currently planned and thus could
significantly reduce cleanup costs. In other cases it could allocate
funding using a greater emphasis on risk reduction, which could shift
funding among sites. Regulators told us that they would be opposed to
receiving reduced funding at their individual sites and might not be
willing to modify the compliance agreements to further extend schedule
milestones. DOE generally did not involve the regulators in developing
its reform initiative, but is now coordinating with regulators as it
develops implementation strategies for each site. Therefore, it is too
early to tell if the regulators will support these changes to site
cleanup programs.
We provided a copy of our draft report to DOE for review and comment.
DOE responded that our draft report accurately presented information on
the current status of compliance agreements and generally agreed with
the findings of the report. DOE‘s complete comments are presented in
appendix II.
Background:
DOE is responsible for a nationwide complex of facilities created during
World War II and the Cold War to research, produce, and test nuclear
weapons. Much of the complex is no longer in productive use, but
contains vast quantities of nuclear and hazardous waste and other
materials related to the production of nuclear material. Since the
1980s, DOE has been planning and carrying out activities around the
complex to clean up, contain, safely store, and dispose of these
materials. It is a daunting challenge, involving the development of
complicated technologies, costing about $220 billion, and expecting to
take 70 years or longer. DOE has reported completing its cleanup work
at 74 of the 114 sites in the complex, but those were small and the
least difficult to deal with. The sites remaining to be cleaned up
present enormous challenges to DOE.
DOE‘s cleanup program is carried out primarily under two environmental
laws: the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and
Liability Act of 1980, as amended, and the Resource Conservation
Recovery Act of 1976, as amended. Under section 120 of CERCLA, EPA
must, where appropriate, evaluate hazardous waste sites at DOE‘s
facilities to determine whether the waste sites qualify for inclusion
on the National Priorities List, EPA‘s list of the nation‘s most
serious hazardous waste sites. For each facility listed on the National
Priorities List, section 120(e) (2) of CERCLA requires DOE to enter
into an interagency agreement with EPA for the completion of all
necessary remedial actions at the facility. The interagency agreement
must include, among other things, the selection of and schedule for the
completion of the remedial action. Interagency agreements are revised,
as necessary, to incorporate new information, adjust schedules, and
address changing conditions. These agreements often include the
affected states as parties to the agreements. These agreements may be
known as Federal Facility Agreements or Tri-Party Agreements. Under
amendments to RCRA contained in section 105 of the Federal Facility
Compliance Act of 1992, DOE generally must develop site treatment plans
for its mixed-waste sites.[Footnote 2] These plans are submitted for
approval to states authorized by EPA to perform regulatory
responsibilities for RCRA within their borders or to EPA if the state
does not have the required authority. Upon approval of the treatment
plans, the state or EPA must issue an order requiring compliance with
the approved plan. The agreements are generally known as Federal
Facility Compliance orders.
DOE carries out its cleanup program through the Assistant Secretary for
Environmental Management and in consultation with a variety of
stakeholders. The Assistant Secretary directs DOE‘s cleanup program at
those sites under her direct control, including Hanford, Washington;
Idaho Falls, Idaho; Savannah River, South Carolina; Rocky Flats,
Colorado; and Fernald, Ohio; and is also responsible for the cleanup
programs at other DOE sites, including Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Nevada
Test Site, Nevada; and Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico. Many
other stakeholders are involved in the cleanup. These include the
federal EPA and state environmental agencies, county and local
governmental agencies, citizen groups, advisory groups, Native American
tribes, and other organizations. In most cases, DOE‘s regulators are
parties to the compliance agreements.[Footnote 3] Other stakeholders
advocate their views through various public involvement processes
including site-specific advisory boards.
Compliance Agreements Are of Three Main Types:
The 70 compliance agreements at DOE sites vary greatly but can be
divided into three main types: (1) 29 are agreements specifically
required by CERCLA to address cleanup of federal sites on EPA‘s
national priorities list of the nation‘s worst hazardous waste sites or
by RCRA to address the management of hazardous waste or mixed
radioactive and hazardous waste at DOE facilities, (2) 6 are court-
ordered agreements resulting from lawsuits initiated primarily by
states, and (3) 35 are other agreements, including state administrative
orders enforcing state hazardous waste management laws. All of DOE‘s
major sites have at least one compliance agreement in place, and many
of these sites have all three types of agreements. Regardless of type,
the agreements all contain enforceable milestones that DOE has agreed
to meet. Collectively, as of December 2001, the 70 agreements had
almost 7,200 schedule milestones.[Footnote 4] The milestones range from
completing a report or obtaining a permit to finishing small cleanup
actions or major cleanup projects. Table 1 shows, for each type of
agreement, the number of sites and the number of schedule milestones
they contain. See appendix I for a complete list of the 70 compliance
agreements and information on the schedule milestones they contain.
Table 1: Types of DOE Compliance Agreements and Related Schedule
Milestones:
Type of agreement: Agreements specifically required to implement CERCLA
and RCRA requirements;
Number of agreements: 29;
Number of sites: 20;
Number of enforceable milestones: 5,251.
Type of agreement: Court-ordered agreements resulting from lawsuits;
Number of agreements: 6;
Number of sites: 6;
Number of enforceable milestones: 146.
Type of agreement: All other agreements;
Number of agreements: 35;
Number of sites: 12;
Number of enforceable milestones: 1,789.
Type of agreement: Total;
Number of agreements: 70;
Number of sites: 23[A];
Number of enforceable milestones: 7,186.
[A] The numbers in this column do not add because many DOE sites have
more than one agreement.
Source: GAO analysis of DOE data.
[End of table]
Agreements of the first type”those specifically required by CERCLA or by
RCRA”are in effect at all of DOE‘s major sites. They tend to cover a
relatively large number of cleanup activities and have the majority of
schedule milestones that DOE must meet. Even within this category of
agreements, however, the number of milestones in a particular agreement
varies widely. For example, the Tri-Party Agreement at the Hanford site,
which implements both CERCLA and RCRA requirements, contains 951
milestones, and more milestones will be added in the future. The
agreement addresses nearly all of the cleanup work and many
administrative processes to be completed at the site over the next 70
years. At another site, the agreement implementing CERCLA requirements
at DOE‘s Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York, contains 63
milestones and more milestones will be added in the future. This
agreement also addresses most of the cleanup activities that will occur
at that site. Several factors can influence the number of milestones in
an agreement, including the extent of environmental contamination and
the preferences of the regulators.
Agreements that implement court-ordered settlements exist at only a few
DOE sites, tend to be focused on a specific issue or concern, and have
fewer associated schedule milestones. These agreements are typically
between DOE and states. The issues addressed by the agreements ranged
from treating high-level waste so it could be disposed of outside the
state to submitting permit applications for treating, storing, and
disposing of hazardous wastes in specific locations. For example, at
the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, a
settlement agreement containing 33 milestones was signed that, among
other things, established a schedule for removing used (’spent“)
nuclear fuel from Idaho. The agreement was between DOE, the state of
Idaho, and the U.S. Navy, because spent nuclear fuel from Navy ships is
stored at the Idaho Falls site. The settlement agreement resolved a
long-standing dispute between Idaho and DOE about shipping waste in and
out of the state.
The remaining agreements are based on either federal or state
environmental laws and address a variety of purposes, such as cleaning
up spills of hazardous waste or remediating groundwater contamination,
and have a wide-ranging number of milestones. For example, an agreement
at DOE‘s Fernald, Ohio, site contains only four milestones and addresses
neutralizing and removing hazardous waste at the site. In contrast, an
agreement at the Nevada Test Site contains 464 milestones and addresses
identifying locations of potential contamination and implementing
corrective actions and also implementing specific sampling and
monitoring requirements.
Most Milestone Dates Have Been Met, but Meeting Milestones Is Not a
Good Measure of Cleanup Progress:
DOE reported completing 4,558 of the 7,186 milestones in these
agreements as of December 2001, about 80 percent of them by the time
originally scheduled in the agreements. Many of the milestones completed
either have been administrative, such as issuing a report, or have
involved completing some kind of step in the cleanup process, such as
conducting certain tests. Although such process steps may be important
in arriving at eventual cleanup, it is unreliable to use them to judge
how much has been accomplished in actually cleaning up the sites. When
DOE misses a milestone, regulators have several options, including
negotiating a new date or assessing a penalty. Thus far, regulators
have generally been willing to negotiate extensions when DOE found
itself unable to complete a milestone on time, approving about 93
percent of DOE‘s requests for milestone changes. In 13 cases,
regulators (generally the EPA) took enforcement actions for not meeting
a milestone date. The 13 enforcement actions resulted in DOE making
$1.8 million in monetary payments and about $4 million in other
penalties (such as added work requirements), and were for problems such
as delaying the construction of a mixed-waste laboratory or the
selection of a method to remove and treat contamination from soil. At
the sites we visited, regulators said that so far, they had been
willing to take a collaborative and flexible approach to extending
milestones. However, regulators said that they generally were unwilling
to extend milestones just to accommodate lower funding levels by DOE. At
one site, we found instances in which this concern had grown to the
point that DOE decided to adhere to a sensitive milestone rather than
to propose using a less expensive approach that would have taken
longer.
DOE Completed Most Schedule Milestones on Time:
DOE reported completing about two-thirds of the 7,186 milestones
contained in its compliance agreements as of December 2001. Of the
4,558 milestones completed, 3,639, or about 80 percent, were finished by
the original due date for the milestone. The remainder of the completed
milestones were finished either after the original due date had passed
or on a renegotiated due date, but DOE reported that the regulators
considered the milestones to be met. Currently, DOE has agreed to
complete at least 2,400 additional milestones in the future. However,
the actual number of milestones DOE will need to complete will likely be
higher, as milestones will be added with changes in cleanup strategies
or as new work is identified.[Footnote 5]
Most of the milestones DOE must meet are contained in the compliance
agreements at its six largest sites”Hanford, Savannah River, Idaho
Falls, Rocky Flats, Oak Ridge, and Fernald. These six DOE sites are
important because about two-thirds of DOE‘s cleanup funding goes to
them. These sites reported completing a total of 2,901 of their 4,262
milestones and met the original completion date for the milestones an
average of 79 percent of the time. As table 2 shows, this percentage
varied from a high of 95 percent at Rocky Flats to a low of 47 percent
at Savannah River. Besides the 1,334 milestones currently yet to be
completed, additional milestones will be added in the future.
Table 2: Information on Compliance Agreement Milestones at DOE‘s Six
Largest Cleanup Sites (Dollars in millions):
Site and state: Hanford (including Office of River Protection),
Washington;
Current EM lifecycle cleanup estimate: $62,097;
Number of enforceable milestones[A]: 1,080;
Number of milestones completed: 825;
Number of milestones completed on original date[B]: 743;
Percent of completed milestones meeting original due date: 90%.
Site and state: Savannah River, South Carolina;
Current EM lifecycle cleanup estimate: $37,809;
Number of enforceable milestones[A]: 714;
Number of milestones completed: 556;
Number of milestones completed on original date[B]: 264;
Percent of completed milestones meeting original due date: 47%.
Site and state: Idaho Falls, Idaho;
Current EM lifecycle cleanup estimate: $27,881;
Number of enforceable milestones[A]: 428;
Number of milestones completed: 334;
Number of milestones completed on original date[B]: 312;
Percent of completed milestones meeting original due date: 93%.
Site and state: Oak Ridge, Tennessee;
Current EM lifecycle cleanup estimate: $8,456;
Number of enforceable milestones[A]: 846;
Number of milestones completed: 513;
Number of milestones completed on original date[B]: 360;
Percent of completed milestones meeting original due date: 70%.
Site and state: Rocky Flats, Colorado;
Current EM lifecycle cleanup estimate: $7,705;
Number of enforceable milestones[A]: 119;
Number of milestones completed: 62;
Number of milestones completed on original date[B]: 59;
Percent of completed milestones meeting original due date: 95%.
Site and state: Fernald, Ohio;
Current EM lifecycle cleanup estimate: $3,341;
Number of enforceable milestones[A]: 1,075;
Number of milestones completed: 611;
Number of milestones completed on original date[B]: 558;
Percent of completed milestones meeting original due date: 91%.
[A] The total number of milestones is not yet known because at some
sites, many milestones will be added in the future as cleanup
strategies change, new schedules are set, and new work is defined.
[B] The number of milestones completed on the original due date is the
total of all milestones satisfactorily completed by the original date
DOE agreed to with regulators. Those milestones completed on other than
the original due date were generally not considered missed milestones
because the milestone dates were either extended or renegotiated with
regulators.
Source: GAO analysis of DOE data.
[End of table]
Number of Completed Milestones Is Not a Good Measure of DOE‘s Cleanup
Progress, but Milestones Are Useful to Regulators:
For several reasons DOE‘s success in completing milestones on time is
not a good measure of progress in cleaning up the weapons complex.
Specifically:
* Many of the milestones do not indicate what cleanup work has been
accomplished. For example, many milestones require completing an
administrative requirement that may not indicate what, if any, actual
cleanup work was performed. At DOE‘s six largest sites, DOE officials
reported that about 73 percent of the 2,901 schedule milestones
completed were tied to administrative requirements, such as obtaining a
permit or submitting a report.
* Some agreements do not have a fixed number of milestones, and
additional milestones are added over time as work scope is more fully
defined. For example, one of Idaho‘s compliance agreements establishes
milestones for remedial activities after a record of decision[Footnote
6] has been signed for a given work area. Four records of decision
associated with the agreement have not yet been approved. Their
approval will increase the number of enforceable milestones required
under that agreement. Because the total number of milestones associated
with those types of agreements is not yet known, DOE‘s overall progress
in accomplishing the cleanup is difficult to determine.
* Many of the remaining milestones are tied to DOE‘s most expensive and
challenging cleanup work, much of which still lies ahead. Approximately
two-thirds of the estimated $220 billion cost of cleaning up DOE sites
will be incurred after 2006. DOE has reported that the cleanup
activities remaining to be done present enormous technical and
management challenges, and considerable uncertainties exist over the
final cost and time frame for completing the cleanup.
Although schedule milestones are of questionable value as a measure of
cleanup progress, the milestones do help regulators track DOE‘s
activities. Regulators at the four sites we visited said that the
compliance agreements they oversee and the milestones associated with
those agreements provide a way to bring DOE into compliance with
existing environmental laws and regulations. They said the agreements
also help to integrate the requirements that exist under various
federal laws and allow regulators to track annual progress against
DOE‘s milestone commitments.
Regulators Have Generally Been Willing to Accommodate Delayed or
Missed Milestones:
Regulators have generally been flexible in agreeing with DOE to change
milestone dates when the original milestone cannot be met. DOE received
approval to change milestone deadlines in over 93 percent of the 1,413
requests made to regulators. Only 3 percent of DOE‘s requests were
denied. Regulators at the four sites we visited told us they prefer to
be flexible with DOE on accomplishing an agreement‘s cleanup goals. For
example, they generally expressed willingness to work with DOE to
extend milestone deadlines when a problem arises due to technology
limitations or engineering problems. Because regulators have been so
willing to adjust milestones, DOE officials reported missing a total of
only 48 milestones, or about 1 percent of milestones that have been
completed.
Even in those few instances where DOE missed milestone deadlines and
regulators were unwilling to negotiate revised dates, regulators have
infrequently applied penalties available under the compliance
agreements. DOE reported that regulators have taken enforcement actions
only 13 times since 1988 when DOE failed to meet milestone deadlines.
These enforcement actions resulted in DOE paying about $1.8 million in
monetary penalties, as shown in table 3.
Table 3: Number of Compliance Agreement Missed Milestones and Monetary
Penalties Paid at DOE Sites:
Site and state: Hanford, Washington;
Milestones missed: 13;
Enforcement actions taken: 2;
Monetary penalty paid: $100,000[A].
Site and state: Idaho Falls, Idaho;
Milestones missed: 4;
Enforcement actions taken: 2;
Monetary penalty paid: $970,000[B].
Site and state: Portsmouth, Ohio;
Milestones missed: 2;
Enforcement actions taken: 2;
Monetary penalty paid: $292,000.
Site and state: Fernald, Ohio;
Milestones missed: 7;
Enforcement actions taken: 3;
Monetary penalty paid: $250,000.
Site and state: Oak Ridge, Tennessee;
Milestones missed: 2;
Enforcement actions taken: 2;
Monetary penalty paid: $100,000.
Site and state: Rocky Flats, Colorado;
Milestones missed: 2;
Enforcement actions taken: 2;
Monetary penalty paid: $100,000.
Total:
Milestones missed: 30;
Enforcement actions taken: 13;
Monetary penalty paid: $1,812,000.
[A] Hanford regulators recently levied a monetary penalty of $5,000 for
the first week and $10,000 for each additional week that DOE missed a
July 31, 2001, milestone to start construction of a waste treatment
facility. However, regulators said they will cancel the penalty if DOE
meets a new milestone date set for the end of this year. Therefore,
this monetary penalty is not included in table 3.
[B] In April 2002, DOE agreed to pay $800,000 for missing a milestone
requiring submission of scope of work documents for one of the site‘s
waste burial sites. As of the time of this report, DOE had not yet
paid the penalty. Therefore, this monetary penalty is not included in
table 3.
Source: GAO analysis of DOE data.
[End of table]
In addition to or instead of regulators assessing monetary penalties,
several DOE sites agreed to other arrangements valued at about $4
million. For example, for missing a milestone to open a transuranic
[Footnote 7] waste storage facility at the Rocky Flats site, the site
agreed to provide a $40,000 grant to a local emergency planning
committee to support a chemical safety in schools program. At the Oak
Ridge site, because of delays in operating a mixed waste incinerator,
site officials agreed to move up the completion date for $1.4 million
worth of cleanup work already scheduled. Also, at three sites”Paducah,
Kentucky; Lawrence Livermore Main Site, California; and Nevada Test
Site, Nevada”the regulators either did not impose penalties for missed
milestones or the issue was still under discussion with DOE.
Regulators May Be Less Flexible if Level of Effort Declines:
While the consequences so far of not meeting schedule milestones have
been few, regulators at individual sites may be less tolerant if DOE‘s
level of effort declines at their site. Regulators at the four sites we
visited told us while they were willing to renegotiate milestone
deadlines for technical uncertainties, they were far less inclined to
be flexible if delays occurred because DOE did not provide the funding
needed to accomplish work by the dates agreed to in the compliance
agreements. The federal and state regulators told us that they prefer
to be flexible and work with DOE to renegotiate milestone deadlines
that will allow DOE to develop appropriate strategies to accomplish the
work. However, these regulators also noted that a lack of funding was
not a valid reason for DOE to avoid meeting its compliance
requirements.
At DOE‘s Idaho Falls site, DOE has chosen not to pursue potentially less
expensive ways to accomplish cleanup work in order to comply with a
court-ordered milestone for shipment of wastes off-site. For example,
DOE agreed with its regulators to characterize and prepare for shipment
off-site about 15,000 barrels of untreated transuranic waste by December
31, 2002. This milestone is part of an agreement that also allows
separate shipments of spent nuclear fuel from navy ships to be received
at DOE‘s Idaho Falls site. According to a February 1999 report by its
inspector general, DOE could save about $66 million by deferring the
processing and shipment off-site of the transuranic waste until a
planned on-site treatment facility was completed, thus reducing the
waste volume and cost to prepare it for shipment.[Footnote 8] But doing
so would have caused DOE to miss the deadline set in the site‘s
compliance agreement to ship the waste from the state. Although missing
the deadline carries no monetary penalties under this agreement,
missing it would allow the state to suspend shipments of DOE spent
nuclear fuel into the Idaho site for storage. To avoid this
possibility, DOE decided not to wait until March 2003 or later, when DOE
estimated a new treatment facility would be operational to prepare the
waste for shipment at a substantially reduced cost. Instead, DOE chose
to comply with the milestone to characterize, repackage, and ship the
waste without treatment, even though it was the more expensive option.
DOE‘s Budget Request Does Not Identify the Funding Needed to Meet
Compliance Requirements:
The president‘s budget proposal for DOE, which is the version of the DOE
budget submitted to the Congress, does not specifically identify the
cost of complying with compliance agreements. DOE is not required to
provide this information. As part of formulating their budget requests
for DOE headquarters, individual DOE sites go through a process that
includes developing compliance estimates.[Footnote 9] However, in the
process that DOE headquarters uses to finalize the DOE-wide budget
request, the site-level estimates become absorbed without specific
identification into broader budget considerations that revolve around
DOE-wide funding availability and other needs. As DOE headquarters
officials adjust the budget amounts in the process of reconciling
various competing funding needs, the final budget submitted to the
Congress has, with few exceptions, no clear relationship to the amounts
sites estimated were needed to fund compliance requirements. Even if it
were possible to trace this relationship in the final budget, the
figure would have limited significance, because sites‘ compliance cost
estimates are based primarily on the expected size of the budget. If
the funding sites receive is insufficient to accomplish all of the
compliance activities planned for that year, sites must decide which
activities to defer to future years. If sites receive more funding than
anticipated in a particular year, they have an opportunity to increase
the amount of money spent on compliance requirements.
Cost of Compliance Requirements Is Not Identified in the Budget
Submitted to the Congress:
The president‘s budget submitted to the Congress does not provide
information on the amount of funding requested for DOE‘s compliance
requirements. DOE sites prepare budget estimates that include compliance
cost estimates and submit them for consideration by DOE headquarters.
DOE headquarters officials evaluate individual site estimates and
combine them into an overall DOE-wide budget, taking into account
broader considerations and other priorities that DOE must address as
part of the give and take of the budget process. The budget sent to the
Congress has summary information on DOE‘s programs and activities, but
it provides no information on the portion of the budget needed to fund
compliance requirements. DOE is not required to develop or present this
information to the Congress. The president‘s budget typically states
that the DOE funding requested is sufficient to substantially comply
with compliance agreements, but the total amount of funding needed for
compliance is not developed or disclosed.
Officials at DOE headquarters told us that they did not think
information on funding to meet compliance requirements was needed in the
president‘s budget. They noted that budget guidance from the Office of
Management and Budget does not require DOE to develop or present
information on the cost of meeting compliance requirements, and they
said doing so for the thousands of milestones DOE must meet would be
unnecessarily burdensome. They said their approach has been to allocate
funds appropriated by the Congress and make it the sites‘
responsibility to use the funds in a way that meets the compliance
agreement milestones established at the site level.
Compliance Estimates at the Site Level Mainly Reflect Anticipated Budget
Levels:
Although DOE is not required to identify its compliance costs in the
budget request that goes to the Congress, DOE does develop this
information at the site level. This occurs because many of the
compliance agreements require DOE to request sufficient funding each
year to meet all of the requirements in the agreements. Also, DOE must
respond to Executive Order 12088, which directs executive agencies to
ensure that they request sufficient funds to comply with pollution
control standards. Accordingly, each year DOE‘s sites develop budget
estimates that also identify the amount needed to meet compliance
requirements.
The sites‘ process in developing these compliance estimates shows that a
compliance estimate is a flexible number. DOE sites develop at least two
budget estimates each year, and each estimate includes an amount
identified as compliance requirements. Two budget estimates typically
completed by the sites each year are the ’full requirements“ estimate
and the ’target“ estimate. The full requirements estimate identifies
how much money a site would need to accomplish its work in what site
officials consider to be the most desirable fashion. The target
estimate reflects a budget strategy based primarily on the amount of
funding the site received the previous year and is considered a more
realistic estimate of the funding a site can expect to receive. For
each of these budget estimates, DOE sites also include an estimate of
their compliance costs. As a result of this process, DOE sites usually
have different estimates of their compliance costs for the same budget
year. Table 4 shows how the compliance cost estimates related to
compliance agreements changed under different budget scenarios.
Table 4: Cost of Meeting Compliance Requirements under Two Different
Budget Scenarios at Four DOE Sites, Fiscal Year 2002 (Dollars in
millions):
DOE Site: Hanford: Richland;
Full requirements estimate, Compliance[A]: $429.6;
Full requirements estimate, Total: $958.4;
Target estimate, Compliance[A]: $265.5;
Target estimate, Total: $721.8.
DOE Site: Hanford: River Protection;
Full requirements estimate, Compliance[A]: $987.1;
Full requirements estimate, Total: $1,149.7;
Target estimate, Compliance[A]: $685.2;
Target estimate, Total: $838.0.
DOE Site: Idaho Falls;
Full requirements estimate, Compliance[A]: $366.6;
Full requirements estimate, Total: $643.1;
Target estimate, Compliance[A]: $313.6;
Target estimate, Total: $540.6.
DOE Site: Savannah River;
Full requirements estimate, Compliance[A]: $294.5;
Full requirements estimate, Total: $1,411.1;
Target estimate, Compliance[A]: $288.4;
Target estimate, Total: $1,268.5.
DOE Site: Oak Ridge;
Full requirements estimate, Compliance[A]: $424.6;
Full requirements estimate, Total: $741.7;
Target estimate, Compliance[A]: $405.5;
Target estimate, Total: $668.3.
[A] The compliance amounts in this column show only the funding
associated with meeting requirements contained in compliance
agreements. It does not include (1) estimates of the funding needed to
comply with requirements in federal, state, or local environmental laws
and regulations that are not part of a compliance agreement or (2) the
funding DOE estimates is necessary to maintain minimal site
infrastructure, security, and safety requirements.
Source: GAO analysis of DOE data.
[End of table]
The multiple estimates of compliance costs developed by DOE sites
indicate that DOE sites have alternative ways of achieving compliance in
any given year. When we asked DOE officials to explain how the sites can
have different estimates of the cost of meeting compliance requirements
in the same year, they said that how much DOE plans to spend on
compliance activities each year varies depending on the total amount of
money available. Because many of the compliance milestones are due in
the future, sites estimate how much compliance activity is needed each
year to meet the future milestones. If sites anticipate that less money
will be available, they must decide what compliance activities are
critical for that year and defer work on some longer-term milestones to
future years. On the other hand, if more money is available, sites have
an opportunity to increase spending on compliance activities earlier
than absolutely necessary.
DOE is concerned that deferring activities that support milestones in
future years may cause future milestones to be missed or renegotiated.
In general, the sites‘ target estimates and actual funding received
have been below the sites‘ full requirements estimates. DOE officials
in headquarters and the sites we visited are concerned that recurring
years of funding below the ’full requirements“ level could result in a
growth of future funding needs that eventually may cause DOE to fail to
meet milestone dates and/or require it to renegotiate the milestones.
As an alternative to receiving more funding, DOE occasionally is able
to identify operational efficiencies that accomplish the work for less
money. DOE officials also acknowledged that DOE‘s current initiative to
reassess its overall cleanup approach may result in identifying
alternative cleanup approaches that could eliminate the need to perform
some of the future cleanup work that has been deferred.
Compliance Agreements Are Site Specific and Do Not Allow for Managing
Risks across DOE Sites:
Compliance agreements are site-specific and are not intended as a way to
manage environmental risks across DOE‘s many sites. The agreements
generally reflect cleanup priorities established by local stakeholders
and set out a sequence for accomplishing the work. Risk is one factor
considered in sequencing the cleanup work at the sites, but other
factors such as demonstrating cleanup progress and reducing the overall
cost of maintaining facilities are also considered. DOE has not
developed a comprehensive, relative ranking of the risks that it faces
across its sites; as a result, it has no systematic way to make
decisions among sites based on risk. DOE has tried to develop such a
methodology in the past but has been unsuccessful in doing so. Instead,
DOE has provided relatively stable funding to its sites each year and
generally allowed local stakeholders to determine their priorities for
sequencing work at the sites. This approach may change: the
department‘s recently announced initiative to improve the performance
of the environmental management program includes, as a key step,
developing a risk-based cleanup strategy. DOE is currently evaluating
how best to proceed in developing the risk-based strategy.
Compliance Agreements Do Not Provide a Basis for Setting Cleanup
Priorities across DOE Sites:
DOE‘s compliance agreements focus on environmental issues at specific
sites. Because they are site-specific and do not include information on
the risks being addressed, the agreements do not provide a means of
prioritizing among sites and, therefore, do not provide a basis for
decision-making across all DOE sites. For example, a compliance
agreement at Savannah River focuses on achieving compliance with
applicable CERCLA and RCRA requirements but does not specify the level
of risks being addressed by specific cleanup activities.
In developing the compliance agreements, risk is only one of several
factors considered in setting agreement milestones. Other factors
include the preferences and concerns of local stakeholders, business
and technical risk, the cost associated with maintaining old
facilities, and the desire to achieve demonstrable progress on cleanup.
The schedules for when and in what sequence to perform the cleanup work
reflect local DOE and stakeholder views on these and other factors. For
example, Savannah River regulators told us that they were primarily
concerned that DOE maintain a certain level of effort linked to the
compliance agreement and they expected DOE to schedule this work to
most efficiently clean up the site. DOE developed a decision model to
determine how to allocate its cleanup dollars at Savannah River to
achieve this efficiency. A group of outside reviewers assessing the
system at the request of site management concluded that the model was
so strongly weighted to efficiency that it was unlikely that serious
risks to human health or the environment could alter the sequencing of
work. DOE officials said they revised the model so that serious risks
receive greater emphasis.
DOE‘s Past Attempts to Develop a Risk-based Approach to Cleanup Were
Unsuccessful:
In response to concerns expressed by the Congress and others about the
effectiveness of the cleanup program, DOE has made several attempts to
develop a national, risk-based approach to cleanup. As early as 1993,
the Congress was urging DOE to develop a mechanism for establishing
priorities among competing cleanup requirements. In 1995, we reported
that unrealistic cleanup plans had impeded DOE‘s progress and that DOE
needed to adopt a national risk-based cleanup strategy. DOE‘s efforts
to do so occurred over several years. For example,
* In 1995, DOE developed risk data sheets as part of the budget
development process. First used to develop the budget estimate for
fiscal year 1998, the risk data sheets were used to assign scores based
on such elements as public and worker health and environmental
protection. The approach suffered from data limitations, poor
definitions of the activities, inconsistent scoring of risk, and
inadequate involvement with stakeholders. Finally, in 1997 DOE
abandoned this effort.
* In 1997, DOE established risk classifications as part of its project
baseline summaries.[Footnote 10] The project baseline summaries
contained a component that addressed each project‘s environmental risk.
However, DOE did not have a clear basis for classifying risks, and the
effort was not implemented consistently or generally accepted by DOE
field staff. After 1998, this information was no longer developed.
* In 1999, DOE pilot tested the use of site risk profiles at 10 DOE
offices. The profiles were intended to provide risk information about
the sites, make effective use of existing data at the sites, and
incorporate stakeholder input. However, reviewers found that the site
profiles failed to adequately address environmental or worker risks
because the risks were not consistently or adequately documented. In
2001, DOE eliminated a support group responsible for assisting the
sites with this effort, and the risk profiles are generally no longer
being developed or used.
A 1999 DOE-funded study to evaluate its efforts to establish greater
use of risk-based decision making concluded that none of the attempts
had been successful.[Footnote 11] Common problems identified by the
study included poor documentation of risks and inconsistent scoring of
risks between sites. The study reported that factors contributing to
the failure of these efforts included a lack of consistent vision about
how to use risk to establish work priorities, the lack of confidence in
the results by DOE personnel, the unacceptability of the approaches to
stakeholders at the sites, and DOE‘s overall failure to integrate any
of the approaches into the decision-making process. However, the study
concluded that the use of risk as a criterion for cleanup decision-
making across DOE‘s sites was not only essential, but was feasible and
practical, given an appropriate level of commitment and effort by DOE.
Without a national, risk-based approach to cleanup in place, DOE‘s
budget strategy has been to provide stable funding for individual sites
and let the sites determine what they needed most to accomplish. For
example, over the last 5 years, funding for Savannah River has ranged
from $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion and Rocky Flats received from $621
million to $665 million.[Footnote 12] DOE‘s Associate Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Policy, Planning, and Budget told us that this approach
allowed sites to allocate their funding based on their site-specific
risk, compliance, and closure objectives.
DOE‘s Current Initiative to Improve the Cleanup Program Has Identified
Accelerated Risk Reduction as a Central Theme:
DOE plans to shift its cleanup program to place greater focus on rapid
reduction of environmental risk. In February 2002, DOE released a report
describing numerous problems with the environmental management program
and recommending a number of corrective actions.[Footnote 13] The report
concluded that, among other things, the cleanup program was not based
on a comprehensive, coherent, technically supported risk
prioritization; it was not focused on accelerating risk reduction; and
it was not addressing the challenges of uncontrolled cost and schedule
growth. The report recommended that DOE, in consultation with its
regulators, move to a national strategy for cleanup. In addition, the
report noted that the compliance agreements have failed to achieve the
expected risk reduction and have sometimes not focused on the highest
risk. The report recommended that DOE develop specific proposals and
present them to the states and EPA with accelerated risk reduction as
the goal.
DOE‘s new initiative provides additional funds for cleanup reform and is
designed to serve as an incentive to sites and regulators to identify
accelerated risk reduction and cleanup approaches. DOE‘s fiscal year
2003 budget request includes a request for $800 million for this
purpose. Moreover, the Administration has agreed to support up to an
additional $300 million if needed for cleanup reforms. The set-aside
would come from a reduction in individual site funding levels and an
increase in the overall funding level for the cleanup program. The
money would be made available to sites that reach agreements with
federal and state regulators on accelerated cleanup approaches. Sites
that do not develop accelerated programs would not be eligible for the
funds. As a result, sites that do not participate could receive less
funding than in past years. One initial response has been at Hanford,
where DOE and the regulators signed a letter of intent in March 2002 to
accelerate cleanup at the site by 35 years or more. DOE and the
regulators agreed to consider the greatest risks first as a principle
in setting cleanup priorities. They also agreed to consider, as targets
of opportunity for accelerated risk reduction, 42 potential areas
identified in a recent study at the site. While accelerating the
cleanup may hold promise, Hanford officials acknowledged that much
technical, regulatory, and operational work is required to actually
implement the proposals in the new approach.
DOE is proceeding with the selection and approval of accelerated
programs at the sites, as well as identifying the funding for those
accelerated programs. At the same time, DOE is considering how to best
develop a risk-based cleanup strategy. DOE‘s Assistant Secretary for
Environmental Management said that in developing the risk-based
approach, DOE should use available technical information, existing
reports, DOE‘s own knowledge, and common sense to make risk-based
decisions. Because DOE‘s approach to risk assessment is under
development, it is unclear how effective it will be or whether in
implementing it, DOE will be able to overcome the barriers encountered
during past efforts to formalize a risk-assessment process. In the
interim, DOE headquarters review teams were evaluating the activities
at each site and were qualitatively incorporating risk into those
evaluations.
Compliance Agreements Were Not a Barrier to Past Management
Improvements, but Impact on February 2002 Initiative Is Unclear:
Compliance agreements have not been a barrier to previous DOE
management improvements, but it is not clear if the agreements will be
used to oppose proposed changes stemming from the February 2002
initiative. In the past, DOE has tried other management initiatives,
within the framework of the compliance agreements. These initiatives
generally have not involved significant changes in cleanup approach or
the potential for significant reductions in funding at individual
sites. We found no evidence that the compliance agreements were a
barrier to implementing such initiatives or were a factor in their
success or failure. Instead, the agreements have been used primarily to
hold DOE accountable, through enforceable milestones, for cleaning up
environmental hazards using whatever management strategy DOE employed
to do so.
The outcome could be different if regulators at individual sites
perceive DOE‘s latest initiative as an attempt to reduce the level of
cleanup activity at the sites. Although DOE generally did not involve
regulators in developing its February 2002 initiative to implement
faster, risk-based cleanup of its sites, based on our discussions with
regulators at several sites, it is unlikely that the compliance
agreements would be a barrier to the initiative, as long as DOE‘s
approach is consistent with environmental laws and results in no
reduction in funding at individual sites. However, the discussions
indicated that DOE could encounter opposition if its realignment of
cleanup priorities results in a site‘s receiving significantly less
funding and therefore accomplishing considerably less work than called
for in the agreement. Parties to the compliance agreements indicated
that if this occurs, they may not be willing to negotiate with DOE to
extend schedule milestones further. In addition, it is unclear if
regulators will use the compliance agreements to resist other aspects
of DOE‘s initiative, such as reclassifying waste to different risk
categories in order to increase disposal options.
Compliance Agreements Have Not Been a Barrier to DOE‘s Past Management
Initiatives:
DOE has implemented or tried to implement a number of management
initiatives in recent years to improve its performance and address
uncontrolled cost and schedule growth. For example, in 1994 it launched
its contract reform initiative, in 1995 it established its privatization
initiative, and in 1998 it implemented its accelerated path-to-closure
initiative. These initiatives affected how DOE approached the cleanup
work, the relationship DOE had with its contractors, and in some cases
the schedule for completing the work. Based on reviewing past
evaluations of these initiatives and discussions with DOE officials, it
appears that DOE proceeded with these initiatives without significant
resistance or constraints as a result of the compliance agreements. For
example:
* DOE‘s contract reform initiative involved a number of separate
efforts, including greater use of fixed-price contracts and performance-
based contracts, and a shift to greater use of management and
integrating contracts that encourage using a greater number of
specialized contractors and an integrating contractor to coordinate the
various activities. DOE has implemented these reforms at many of its
sites, including all of its large cleanup sites. Although the overall
result of DOE‘s contract reform initiative is difficult to measure, the
various contracting reforms occurred within the framework of the
existing cleanup approaches reflected in the compliance agreements in
effect at those sites.[Footnote 14]
* DOE‘s privatization initiative was intended to reduce the cost of
cleanup by attracting ’best in class“ contractors with fixed-price
contracts that required contractors to design, finance, build, own, and
operate treatment facilities and to receive payments only for
successfully treating DOE‘s wastes. Although this approach required
substantially different contracting and financing arrangements and
there was considerable uncertainty about its eventual success, DOE
implemented privatization projects at a number of its major sites, even
though doing so sometimes required delaying or renegotiating near-term
milestones in the compliance agreements. For example, to implement a
privatization contract for the Hanford tank waste project, DOE
renegotiated several milestones with its regulators. The state of
Washington and EPA eventually agreed to the changes, even though they
had concerns about DOE‘s approach. This privatization project failed a
few years later, stemming primarily from significant cost growth, poor
contractor performance, and inadequate DOE management.
* DOE‘s path-to-closure initiative was aimed at developing more
efficient ways to conduct cleanup and, as a result, accelerate cleanup
and closure of DOE sites. DOE‘s goal was to clean up 41 of its 53
remaining contaminated sites by 2006. It proceeded to establish new
cleanup and closure goals at many of its sites within the framework of
the existing compliance agreements. For example, the planned closure of
the Rocky Flats site was changed from 2010 to 2006 through a revision
of the project baseline and award of a new closure contract.[Footnote
15] State of Colorado and EPA regulators supported those changes, even
though they were not consistent with milestone dates in the site
agreement.
Regulators at the DOE sites we visited acknowledged that compliance
agreements have not been a barrier to DOE‘s management improvement
initiatives. They said that although the agreements hold DOE accountable
for its cleanup responsibilities, the agreements do not prescribe how
DOE should manage its program. Several milestones in the compliance
agreements have been renegotiated because DOE wanted to incorporate
changes in its management approach with a resulting effect on specific
projects. For example, DOE‘s spent nuclear fuel project at Hanford is an
effort to stabilize about 2,100 metric tons of highly radioactive spent
fuel stored in aging basins and move the stabilized fuel farther from
the Columbia River. Regulators agreed to revised interim milestones for
the work after DOE proposed changes that would save money and reduce the
risk of radiation exposure to workers.
Effect of Compliance Agreements on Current Management Initiative Is
Unclear:
DOE‘s management reform initiative is in the early stages and site-
specific strategies are only beginning to emerge. DOE has begun
discussions with officials in several states to implement this
accelerated initiative. However, because DOE‘s cleanup reform
initiative is in its early stages, it is unclear how the site
compliance agreements will affect implementation of DOE‘s latest
cleanup reforms. For example, it is not yet known how many sites will
participate in DOE‘s initiative and how many other sites will encounter
cleanup delays because of reduced funding.
Parties to the agreements at the sites we visited were supportive of DOE
efforts to improve management of the cleanup program, but expressed
some concerns about proposals stemming from the February 2002 review
of the program. They said that DOE‘s efforts to accelerate cleanup and
focus attention on the more serious environmental risks are welcomed
and encouraged because such initiatives are consistent with the
regulators‘ overall goals of reducing risks to human health and the
environment. Most regulators added, however, that DOE generally had not
consulted with them in developing its reform initiative and the
regulators were concerned about being excluded from the process. They
also said that DOE‘s initiative lacked specifics and that they had
numerous questions about the criteria DOE will use to select sites and
the process DOE will follow at those sites to develop an implementation
plan to accelerate cleanup and modify cleanup approaches. Most
regulators said they would not view as favorable any attempt by DOE to
avoid appropriate waste treatment activities or significantly delay
treatment by reducing funding available to sites. In such a case, these
regulators are likely to oppose DOE‘s initiative. They told us that
they most likely would not be willing to renegotiate milestones in the
compliance agreements if doing so would lead to delays in the cleanup
program at their sites. In addition, these regulators said that if DOE
misses the milestones after reducing the funding at individual sites,
they would enforce the milestones in the compliance agreements.
The effect of compliance agreements on other aspects of DOE‘s
initiative, especially its proposal to reclassify waste into different
risk categories to increase disposal options, is also unclear. Some of
the proposed changes in waste treatment, such as eliminating the need
to vitrify at least 75 percent of the high-level waste, which could
result in disposing of more of the waste at DOE sites, would signal
major changes in DOE assumptions about acceptable waste treatment and
disposal options. For example, DOE is considering the possibility of
reclassifying much of its high-level waste as low-level mixed waste or
transuranic waste based on the risk attributable to its actual
composition.[Footnote 16] Most of the high-level waste is located at
DOE‘s Hanford site. In addition, DOE officials at Hanford are
considering relaxing the requirement to transport a portion of its
transuranic waste to New Mexico, allowing instead for disposal on-site.
While these options could reduce treatment and disposal costs and time
frames, DOE would need to obtain regulatory and stakeholder agreement
to alter key commitments. These types of changes in treatment approach
would require modifications to current compliance agreements. It is
unclear whether DOE‘s regulators will be supportive of these changes. At
Hanford, the regulators have agreed to discuss these types of changes in
cleanup strategy. However, at all four sites we visited, regulators
said that, although they supported DOE efforts to improve its
operations, they also wanted DOE to meet its compliance commitments.
The regulators commented that it is unclear how DOE‘s proposed
initiatives will be implemented, what technologies will be considered,
and whether the changes will result in reduced cost and accelerated
cleanup while adequately protecting human health and the environment.
DOE generally did not seek input from site regulators or other
stakeholders when developing its latest initiative. DOE‘s review team
leader said that at the time the review team visited individual sites,
the team had not formulated its conclusions or recommendations and so
did not seek regulator input. Furthermore, the team leader said that,
during the review, internal discussions were being held within DOE about
improving ineffective cleanup processes, such as contracting procedures.
To include regulators on the review team during these discussions,
according to the team leader, could have created the impression that the
criticism of DOE processes was regulator driven rather than reflecting
the views of DOE and contractor staff. According to the Associate Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Budget, since the proposals coming
from the review team were made public in February, DOE has held
discussions with regulators at all sites and headquarters about
implementing the proposals.
Conclusions:
DOE carries out its cleanup program in a complex legal and regulatory
environment. Compliance agreements are one mechanism used to organize
these legal and regulatory requirements and set priorities for cleanup
at specific sites. As such, the agreements are not a useful tool, nor
were they intended to be, for managing DOE‘s cleanup program from a
national, system-wide perspective.
It is unclear if compliance agreements will be a potential barrier to
DOE‘s current national cleanup reform initiative. This initiative
involves placing a greater focus on rapidly reducing environmental
risks and, as a result, restructuring how DOE allocates its funding for
cleanup across its sites. In some cases DOE is also considering
dramatically different cleanup approaches than regulators and other
stakeholders have come to expect. DOE‘s compliance agreements could be
a potential barrier to these changes, particularly at those sites where
funding may be reduced as a result of implementing the new initiatives
or where a significantly different approach is being proposed.
DOE faces two main challenges in going forward with its initiative. The
first is following through on its plan to develop and implement a risk-
based method to prioritize its various cleanup activities. Given past
failed attempts to implement a risk-based approach to cleanup,
management leadership and resolve will be needed to overcome the
barriers encountered in past attempts. The second challenge for DOE is
following through on its plan to involve regulators in site
implementation plans. DOE generally did not involve states and
regulatory agencies in the development of its management improvement
initiative. Regulators have expressed concerns about the lack of
specifics in the initiative, how implementation plans will be developed
at individual sites, and about proposals that may delay or
significantly alter cleanup strategies. Addressing both of these
challenges will be important to better ensure that DOE‘s latest
management improvement initiative will achieve the desired results of
accelerating risk reduction and reducing cleanup costs.
Agency Comments:
We provided a copy of our draft report to the Department of Energy for
review and comment. DOE‘s Assistant Secretary for Environmental
Management responded that our draft report accurately presented
information on the current status of compliance agreements, and
generally agreed with the findings of the report. In addition, DOE
provided technical clarifications and corrections to our report, which
we incorporated as appropriate.
We performed our review from July 2001 through May 2002 in accordance
with generally accepted government auditing standards.
As arranged with your office, unless you publicly announce its contents
earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days
after the date of this letter. At that time, we will send copies to the
Secretary of Energy. We will also make copies available to others on
request. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on the
GAO Web site at [hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov]. If you or your staff
have any questions or need additional information, please call me at
(202) 512-3841. Other staff contributing to this report are listed in
appendix IV.
Sincerely yours,
Signed by:
(Ms.) Gary L. Jones:
Director, Natural Resources and Environment:
[End of section]
Appendix I: Compliance Orders and Agreements Affecting DOE‘s
Environmental Management Cleanup Program:
This appendix presents information provided by DOE and from a
questionnaire we administered to each of the operations offices that
have sites with compliance agreements. The agreements are categorized
into three types: ’1“ indicates agreements specifically required by
section 120(e) (2) of CERCLA or by RCRA (as amended by section 105 of
the Federal Facility Compliance Act of 1992), ’2“ indicates court-
ordered agreements resulting from lawsuits, ’3“ indicates all other
agreements. We defined a ’compliance agreement“ as a legally
enforceable agreement between DOE and another party or parties that
contained enforceable milestones defining cleanup activities that DOE
must achieve by specified or ascertainable dates and that are funded by
DOE‘s EM program.
In millions of constant 2001 dollars:
Albuquerque Operations Office:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Los Alamos National Laboratory,
New Mexico; $2,188;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Federal Facility Compliance Order; 10/4/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Store, treat, and dispose of
covered mixed wastes at the laboratory (incorporates Site Treatment
Plan);
Parties to the agreement: DOE; New Mexico Environment Department;
University of California;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 129;
Number of milestones completed: 72;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 70.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Los Alamos National Laboratory,
New Mexico; $2,188;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Agreement; 12/10/1993[D];
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Implement remedial action plan and
compliance schedule for storage of mixed waste;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; University of California; New Mexico
Environment Department;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 3;
Number of milestones completed: 3;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 3.
Chicago Operations Office:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Brookhaven National
Laboratory, New York; $361;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Brookhaven National Laboratory
Federal Facility Agreement; 2/28/1992;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish a procedural framework
and schedule for developing, implementing, and monitoring appropriate
response actions at the site; integrate CERCLA response actions with
RCRA corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 63;
Number of milestones completed: 47;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 23.
Idaho Operations Office:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, Idaho; $27,881;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Federal Facility Agreement and
Consent Order for the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory; 12/9/1991;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish procedural framework and
schedule for implementing cleanup actions in accordance with CERCLA,
RCRA, and the Idaho Hazardous Waste Act; integrate CERCLA response
actions with RCRA corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; state of Idaho;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 154;
Number of milestones completed: 123;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 109.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, Idaho; $27,881;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Idaho National Engineering Laboratory
Consent Order; 11/1/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Resolve mixed waste storage
violations, and commit to implement the Site Treatment Plan, which is
incorporated by reference;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Idaho Department of Health and Welfare;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 100;
Number of milestones completed: 63;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 55.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, Idaho; $27,881;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Settlement agreement in Public
Services Company of Colorado v. Batt and United States v. Batt;
10/16/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 2;
Activities covered by the agreement: Treat spent fuel, high-level
waste, and transuranic wastes in Idaho so as to allow disposal outside
the state;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. Department of the Navy; state of
Idaho;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 33;
Number of milestones completed: 22;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 22.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, Idaho; $27,881;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory Consent Order; 4/23/1999;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Resolve alleged violations of
federal and state hazardous waste requirements, including generation,
treatment, storage, and disposal of these wastes;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Idaho Department of Health and Welfare;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 31;
Number of milestones completed: 31;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 31.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, Idaho; $27,881;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Idaho National Engineering Laboratory
Consent Order; 4/3/1992;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Resolve alleged violations,
including storage of mixed waste;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; Idaho Department of Health and
Welfare;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 64;
Number of milestones completed: 62;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 63.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, Idaho; $27,881;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory Consent Order; 1/25/2001[D];
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Resolve alleged violations of
federal and state hazardous waste management requirements;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; Idaho Department of Health and
Welfare;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 14;
Number of milestones completed: 14;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 14.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, Idaho; $27,881;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Order; 6/14/2000;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Resolve potential violations of
state hazardous waste management laws;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Idaho Department of Health and Welfare;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 32;
Number of milestones completed: 19;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 19.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Pinellas, Florida; $266;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Remediation Agreement for the Four
and One-Half Acre Site in Largo, Pinellas County, Florida; 3/12/2001;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Remediate contaminated
groundwater;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Florida Department of Environmental
Protection;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 3;
Number of milestones completed: 2;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 2.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Maxey Flats, Kentucky; $14;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Decree in United States v.
U.S. Ecology; 4/18/1996;
Agreement category[B]: 2;
Activities covered by the agreement: Fund, design, and implement
cleanup actions at the Maxey Flats Superfund site;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. Department of Justice; U.S. EPA;
Commonwealth of Kentucky;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 7;
Number of milestones completed: 5;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 5.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Monticello, Utah; $128;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Monticello Site: Monticello Vicinity
Properties National Priorities List Site and Monticello Millsite Federal
Facility Agreement Pursuant to CERCLA Section 120; 12/22/1988;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Ensure environmental impacts
associated with past and present activities will have appropriate
response actions taken and completed as necessary to protect the public
health and the environment; integrate CERCLA response actions with RCRA
corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; Utah Department of Health;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 61;
Number of milestones completed: 50;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 46.
Nevada Operations Office:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Nevada Test Site, Nevada;
$3,318;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Nevada Test Site Federal Facility
Compliance Act Consent Order; 3/27/1996;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Treat mixed waste stored at the
site”adopts by reference the Site Treatment Plan;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Nevada Division of Environmental
Protection;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 69;
Number of milestones completed: 68;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 55.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Nevada Test Site, Nevada;
$3,318;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Nevada Test Site Federal Facility
Agreement and Consent Order; 5/10/1996;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Identify sites of potential
historic contamination and implement proposed corrective actions based
on public health and environmental considerations;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. Department of Defense; state of
Nevada;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 464;
Number of milestones completed: 178;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 176.
Agreement category[B]:
Activities covered by the agreement:
Parties to the agreement:
Number of enforceable milestones[C]:
Number of milestones completed:
Number of milestones completed on original date:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Nevada Test Site, Nevada;
$3,318;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Mutual Consent Agreement between the
State of Nevada and the Department of Energy for the Storage of Low-
Level Land Disposal Restricted Mixed Waste; 1/14/1994;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Store and manage mixed low-level
waste generated by site characterization and cleanup actions at the
Nevada Test Site;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Nevada Division of Environmental
Protection;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 12;
Number of milestones completed: 12;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 10.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Nevada Test Site, Nevada;
$3,318;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Settlement Agreement for Transuranic
Mixed Waste Storage at the Nevada Test Site; 6/23/1992;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Store mixed transuranic waste at
Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Site;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Nevada Division of Environmental
Protection;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 11;
Number of milestones completed: 11;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 11.
Ohio Operations Office:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Fernald Environmental Management
Project Consent Agreement as amended under CERCLA sections 120 and
106(a); 9/20/1991;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish a procedural framework
and schedule for developing, implementing, and monitoring appropriate
response actions at the site; integrate CERCLA response actions with
RCRA corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 290;
Number of milestones completed: 75;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 63.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Fernald Environmental Management
Project Director‘s Final Findings and Orders; 10/4/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish Site Treatment Plan
covering storage and treatment of mixed wastes and management of
remediation wastes;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Ohio Environmental Protection Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 73;
Number of milestones completed: 60;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 58.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: 1988 Resource Conservation and
Recovery Act/Clean Water Act Consent Decree; 12/2/1988; amended
1/22/93;
Agreement category[B]: 2;
Activities covered by the agreement: Implement compliance with
hazardous waste requirements and control wastewater and runoff;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. Department of Justice; state of
Ohio;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 40;
Number of milestones completed: 39;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 35.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Director‘s Final Findings and Orders;
9/7/2000;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Monitor groundwater;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Fernald Environmental Management
Project;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 135;
Number of milestones completed: 24;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 24.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Federal Facility Compliance
Agreement; 7/18/1986;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish initial remedial
measures and remedial investigations and bring facility into compliance
with Clean Air Act and RCRA
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 258;
Number of milestones completed: 222;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 222.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Director‘s Final Findings and
Orders; 9/10/1993[D];
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Monitor groundwater;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Fernald Environmental Restoration
Management Corporation; Ohio Environmental Protection Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 36;
Number of milestones completed: 36;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 2.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Director‘s Final Findings and Orders;
12/27/1994[D];
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Neutralize and remove hazardous
waste;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Ohio Environmental Protection Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 4;
Number of milestones completed: 4;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 3.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Director‘s Final Findings and
Orders; 6/4/1996;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Integrate the Ohio Environmental
Protection Agency RCRA hazardous waste closure requirements into the
remediation requirements of CERCLA;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Fernald Environmental Restoration
Management Corporation; Ohio Environmental Protection Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 57;
Number of milestones completed: 29;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 29.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Director‘s Findings and Orders;
6/26/1987;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Manage storm water and wastewater;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Ohio Environmental Protection Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 2;
Number of milestones completed: 2;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 2.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Fernald, Ohio; $3,341;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Federal Facility Agreement for
Control & Abatement of Radon-222 Emissions; 11/14/1991;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Control and abate Radon-222
emissions;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 180;
Number of milestones completed: 120;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 120.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Mound, Ohio; $1,413;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Director‘s Final Findings and
Orders; 10/4/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Store and treat mixed waste;
approve Site Treatment Plan;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Ohio Environmental Protection Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 79;
Number of milestones completed: 71;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 71.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Mound, Ohio; $1,413;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Region V and the State of Ohio Federal Facility Agreement; 7/15/1993;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Ensure environmental impacts
associated with past and present activities will have appropriate
response actions taken and completed as necessary to protect the public
health and the environment; integrate CERCLA response actions with RCRA
corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Ohio Environmental Protection Agency;
U.S. EPA;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 92;
Number of milestones completed: 38;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 37.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: West Valley, New York; $2,361;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: West Valley Demonstration Project
Federal Facility Compliance Act Administrative Consent Order;
8/27/1996;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish commitments for
compliance with Site Treatment Plan for mixed waste storage and
generation; develop framework to treat mixed wastes to meet land
disposal restriction requirements; and store current and projected
mixed wastes;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 85;
Number of milestones completed: 80;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 80.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: West Valley, New York; $2,361;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Administrative Order on Consent
Docket No. II RCRA-3008(h)-I 92-0202; 3/5/1992;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Protect human health and the
environment from hazardous waste releases;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; New York State Energy Research
and Development Authority; New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 12;
Number of milestones completed: 12;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 12.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: West Valley, New York; $2,361;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Stipulation Agreement”Remedial
Action Plan R9-4756-99-03, Biovent Stipulation Agreement; 3/19/1999;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Clean up and remove underground
storage tank petroleum releases;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 4;
Number of milestones completed: 3;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 3.
Oakland Operations Office:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Energy Technology and
Engineering Center, California; $197;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Energy Technology and Engineering
Center Federal Facility Compliance Act Order Hazardous Waste Control
Act #95/96-019; 10/6/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Store and treat mixed wastes at
the center; incorporates Site Treatment Plan by reference;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; California Environmental Protection
Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 48;
Number of milestones completed: 38;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 35.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: General Atomics, California;
$15;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: General Atomics Compliance Act Order
Hazardous Waste Control Act #95/96-017; 10/6/1995[D];
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Store and treat mixed wastes at
General Atomics; incorporates Site Treatment Plan by reference;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; California Environmental Protection
Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 73;
Number of milestones completed: 61;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 59.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory, California; $82;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Compliance Act Order Hazardous Waste Control Act #95/96-016;
10/6/1995[E];
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Store and treat mixed waste at the
laboratory;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; California Environmental Protection
Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 235;
Number of milestones completed: 96;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 82.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Laboratory for Energy-Related
Health Research, California; $41;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Federal Facility Agreement for the
Laboratory for Energy-Related Health Research; 12/8/1999;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish a schedule for
implementing cleanup actions in accordance with CERCLA, RCRA, and state
law; integrate CERCLA response actions with RCRA corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; California Environmental Protection
Agency; Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board; California
Department of Health Services;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 21;
Number of milestones completed: 14;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 14.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (Main Site), California; $652;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Federal Facility Compliance Act
Order for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (Main Site) Hazardous
Waste Control Act #96/97-5002; 2/24/1997;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Store and treat mixed waste at the
laboratory; carry out Site Treatment Plan;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; California Environmental Protection
Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 271;
Number of milestones completed: 63;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 55.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (Main Site), California; $652;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (Main Site) Federal Facility Agreement Under CERCLA Section
120; 11/1/1988;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish a procedural framework
and schedule for developing, implementing, and monitoring appropriate
response actions at the site; integrate CERCLA response actions with
RCRA corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; California Department of
Health Services;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 343;
Number of milestones completed: 202;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 174.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory Site 300 (life-cycle cost included in Main Site);
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory Site 300 Federal Facility Agreement, Administrative Docket
No. 92-16; 6/29/1992;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish a procedural framework
and schedule for developing, implementing, and monitoring appropriate
response actions at the site; integrate CERCLA response actions with
RCRA corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; California Department of Toxic
Substances Control; Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control
Board;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 196;
Number of milestones completed: 115;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 92.
Oak Ridge Operations Office:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Oak Ridge Reservation,
Tennessee; $8,456;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Oak Ridge Reservation Compliance
Order, Case No. 95-0514; 9/26/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Implement the Site Treatment Plan
(incorporated by reference) and set schedules for treating and storing
mixed waste;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Tennessee Department of Environment and
Conservation;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 94;
Number of milestones completed: 81;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 78.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Oak Ridge Reservation,
Tennessee; $8,456;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Federal Facility Agreement for the
Oak Ridge Reservation, DOE/OR-1014; 11/18/1991; (effective date
1/1/1992);
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish a procedural framework
and schedule for developing, implementing, and monitoring appropriate
response actions at the site; integrate CERCLA response actions with
RCRA corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; Tennessee Department of
Environment and Conservation;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 752;
Number of milestones completed: 432;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 282.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Paducah, Kentucky; $1,523;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: In the Matter of the U.S. Department
of Energy's Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant Federal Facility Agreement;
2/1/1998;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Implement CERCLA response actions
and RCRA corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; Kentucky Natural Resources and
Environmental Protection Cabinet;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 113;
Number of milestones completed: 69;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 54.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Paducah, Kentucky; $1,523;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: U.S. DOE v. Natural Resources
Environmental Protection Cabinet, Agreed Order, No. DWM-30039-042;
9/10/1997;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Require compliance with the
approved Site Treatment Plan;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Kentucky Natural Resources and
Environmental Protection Cabinet; Kentucky Department for Environmental
Protection;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 156;
Number of milestones completed: 50;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 50.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Paducah, Kentucky; $1,523;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Toxic Substances Control Act Uranium
Enrichment Federal Facilities Compliance Agreement; 2/20/1992;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish a plan to bring uranium
enrichment plants into compliance with Toxic Substances Control Act and
polychlorinated biphenyl regulations;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 28;
Number of milestones completed: 15;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 15.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Portsmouth, Ohio; $3,012;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant
Director‘s Final Findings and Orders; 10/4/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Approve Site Treatment Plan for
treatment of mixed hazardous waste;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Ohio Environmental Protection Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 62;
Number of milestones completed: 37;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 16.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Portsmouth, Ohio; $3,012;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: State of Ohio v. DOE, Civil Action
No. C2 89-732; 9/1/1989;
Agreement category[B]: 2;
Activities covered by the agreement: Clean up and manage hazardous and
mixed waste, polychlorinated biphenyls, and water pollutants at
Portsmouth;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; State of Ohio; U.S. Department of
Justice;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 8;
Number of milestones completed: 8;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 6.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Portsmouth, Ohio; $3,012;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Administrative Consent Order, In the
Matter of U.S. DOE: Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, No. OH7-890-008-
983; 8/12/1997;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish oversight roles for U.S.
EPA and Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for cleanup under the
9/1/1989 consent decree No. C2-89-732;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; Ohio Environmental Protection
Agency;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 212;
Number of milestones completed: 191;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 49.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Portsmouth, Ohio; $3,012;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Toxic Substances Control Act Uranium
Enrichment Federal Facilities Compliance Agreement; 2/20/1992;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Bring DOE‘s former and active
uranium enrichment plants into compliance with Toxic Substances Control
Act and polychlorinated biphenyl regulations;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 6;
Number of milestones completed: 2;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 2.
Agreement category[B]:
Activities covered by the agreement:
Parties to the agreement:
Number of enforceable milestones[C]:
Number of milestones completed:
Number of milestones completed on original date:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Weldon Spring, Missouri; $428;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Weldon Spring Site Federal Facility
Agreement under CERCLA section 104, Docket No. CERCLA-VII-85-F-0057;
8/22/1986;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Perform CERCLA removal and
remedial actions;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 58;
Number of milestones completed: 44;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 36.
Rocky Flats Field Office:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Rocky Flats Environmental
Technology Site, Colorado; $7,705;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Final Rocky Flats Cleanup Agreement;
7/19/1996;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish the framework for
cleaning up Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site; coordinate DOE‘s
cleanup obligations under various statutes;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; Colorado Department of Public
Health and Environment;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 62;
Number of milestones completed: 38;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 37.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Rocky Flats Environmental
Technology Site, Colorado; $7,705;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Compliance Order on Consent No. 99-
09-24-01; 10/27/1999; amended 4/10/2001;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Replace previous consent orders
for mixed residues; establish requirements for mixed residues
management;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Kaiser-Hill Co., LLC; Colorado
Department of Public Health and Environment[F];
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 5;
Number of milestones completed: 4;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 3.
Agreement category[B]:
Activities covered by the agreement:
Parties to the agreement:
Number of enforceable milestones[C]:
Number of milestones completed:
Number of milestones completed on original date:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Rocky Flats Environmental
Technology Site, Colorado; $7,705;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Order Requiring Compliance with Site
Treatment Plan Compliance Order No. 95-10-03-01; 10/3/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Approve and require compliance
with the Site Treatment Plan for mixed waste;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Colorado Department of Public Health and
Environment;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 38;
Number of milestones completed: 8;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 8.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Rocky Flats Environmental
Technology Site, Colorado; $7,705;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Compliance Order on Consent No.
97-08-21-01; 09/11/97;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish compliance requirements
and schedules for implementation of management of hazardous wastes and
hazardous waste portion of mixed waste located in equipment, tanks, or
ancillary tank equipment at the facility;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Kaiser-Hill Company, LLC; Colorado
Department of Public Health and Environment;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 10;
Number of milestones completed: 8;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 7.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Rocky Flats Environmental
Technology Site, Colorado; $7,705;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Compliance Order on Consent No. 97-
08-21-02; 9/4/1997;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish compliance requirements
and schedules for implementation of waste management plans and resolve
violations of regulations;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Kaiser-Hill Company, LLC; Colorado
Department of Public Health and Environment;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 4;
Number of milestones completed: 4;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 4.
Richland Operations Office/Office of River Protection:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Hanford, Washington; $62,097;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Hanford Federal Facility Agreement
and Consent Order, (Tri-Party Agreement); 5/15/1989; amended 12/1998;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish a procedural framework
and schedule for developing, implementing, and monitoring appropriate
response actions at the site; integrate CERCLA response actions with
RCRA corrective action;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; Washington Department of
Ecology;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 951;
Number of milestones completed: 725;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 649.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Hanford, Washington; $62,097;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Decree, CT-99-5076-EFS;
9/30/1999; amended 9/19/2000;
Agreement category[B]: 2;
Activities covered by the agreement: Resolve issues concerning missed
milestones in federal facility agreement of 5/15/1989; establish a
schedule for pumping liquid radioactive waste from single shell tanks
into double shell tanks for storage and treatment. Amendment set
deadline for DOE to award a contract for design and construction of a
waste treatment facility;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Washington Department of Ecology;
Attorney General of Washington; U.S. Department of Justice;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 38;
Number of milestones completed: 21;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 21.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Hanford, Washington; $62,097;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Federal Facility Compliance
Agreement for Radionuclide National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air
Pollutants; 2/7/1994;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Perform activities needed to bring
Hanford site into compliance with the Clean Air Act and its
implementing regulations;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 91;
Number of milestones completed: 79;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 73.
Savannah River Operations Office:
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Order 95-22-HW; 9/29/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement:Implement the Site Treatment Plan;
update plan annually; notify the South Carolina Department of Health
and Environmental Control of new mixed waste streams;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 74;
Number of milestones completed: 26;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 26.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: SRS Federal Facility Agreement under
Section 120 of CERCLA; 1/15/1993;
Agreement category[B]: 1;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish requirements for
remedial action under CERCLA and integrate CERCLA response with
corrective action measures required by RCRA permit;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; U.S. EPA; South Carolina Department of
Health and Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 562;
Number of milestones completed: 455;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 163.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Decree Civil Action No. 1:85-
2583-6; 5/26/1988;
Agreement category[B]: 2;
Activities covered by the agreement: Obtain permit, submit closure
plan, conduct groundwater monitoring, close, and provide post closure
care for certain facilitates at the Savannah River Plant;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control; U.S. Department of Justice; Natural Resources
Defense Council; Energy Research Foundation; Assistant U.S. Attorney of
the District of South Carolina; South Carolina League of Women Voters;
Georgia Conservancy;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 20;
Number of milestones completed: 20;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 20.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Order 99-155-W; 10/11/1999;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Modify compliance schedule for
Clean Water Act National Pollution Discharge Elimination System permit
to provide additional time for construction and modification of
treatment facilities;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control; Westinghouse Savannah River Company;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 3;
Number of milestones completed: 2;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 2.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Order 99-21-HW; 7/13/1999;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish remediation schedules to
meet objectives of corrective action plans to remediate groundwater
contamination as required by South Carolina permit;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 5;
Number of milestones completed: 5;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 5.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Order 99-41-HW; 9/28/1999;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Close incinerator tank; identify
and manage previously unidentified waste;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control; Westinghouse Savannah River Company;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 6;
Number of milestones completed: 6;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 6.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Settlement Agreement 87-27-SW;
5/1/1987; amended 6/15/1989;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Submit revised part B permit
applications;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 5;
Number of milestones completed: 5;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 5.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Settlement Agreement 87-52-SW;
11/10/1987; amended 5/9/1991 and 10/5/1995;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Submit revised part B permit
application for mixed waste management facility; amendments required
submission of further revised part B applications to address low-level
radioactive waste disposal facility and groundwater contamination;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 6;
Number of milestones completed: 6;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 6.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Settlement Agreement 91-51-SW;
8/26/1991;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Refrain from further disposal of
solvent rags in low-level radioactive waste disposal facility and
sanitary landfill; apply for permit and submit closure plans for the
facilities;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 10;
Number of milestones completed: 10;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 10.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Administrative Consent Order 85-70-
SW; 11/7/1985;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: Establish course of action to
achieve compliance with South Carolina hazardous waste management
regulations, including installing monitoring wells and continuing
groundwater assessments;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 7;
Number of milestones completed: 7;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 7.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Order 01-193-W, 01-063-A;
8/24/2001;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: For industrial solid waste
landfill, comply with water and air permit requirements; submit
corrective action plan to address remediation of petroleum
hydrocarbons; submit a monitoring program;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Westinghouse Savannah River Company;
South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 5;
Number of milestones completed: 4;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 4.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Agreement 97-05-SW;
3/24/1997;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: For industrial solid waste
landfill, submit characterization report and permit application;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; South Carolina Department of Health and
Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 5;
Number of milestones completed: 5;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 5.
Site and current lifecycle cleanup cost: Savannah River Site, South
Carolina; $37,809;
Agreement name and date signed[A]: Consent Agreement 97-27-SW;
5/21/1997;
Agreement category[B]: 3;
Activities covered by the agreement: For industrial solid waste
landfill, submit characterization report and permit application;
Parties to the agreement: DOE; Westinghouse Savannah River Company;
South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control;
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 6;
Number of milestones completed: 5;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 5.
Total:
Number of enforceable milestones[C]: 7,186;
Number of milestones completed: 4,558;
Number of milestones completed on original date: 3,639.
[A] If an agreement was signed on multiple dates by the various
parties, the latest date was used in this appendix.
[B] The agreements are divided into three types: 1 = agreements
specifically required by section 120(e) (2) of CERCLA or by RCRA (as
amended by section 105 of the Federal Facility Compliance Act of
1992); 2 = court-ordered agreements resulting from lawsuits; 3 = all
other agreements.
[C] The number of enforceable milestones may change over the life of an
agreement, as milestones are deleted or added to address new work
scope.
[D] This agreement has been completed.
[E] Site was transferred to DOE‘s Office of Science and receives no
further environmental management funding.
[F] Originally the parties to this agreement were DOE; Kaiser-Hill Co.,
LLC; Safe Sites of Colorado, LLC; Rocky Mountain Remediation Services,
LLC; Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. The
amendment removed subcontractors Rocky Mountain Remediation Services and
Safe Sites of Colorado from the compliance order after the new closure
contract with Kaiser-Hill was established.
Source: GAO analysis of DOE data.
[End of table]
[End of section]
Appendix II: Comments from the Department of Energy:
Department of Energy:
Washington, DC 20585:
May 16, 2002:
Mr. William Swick:
Assistant Director:
United States General Accounting Office:
Washington, DC 20548:
Dear Mr. Swick:
We have reviewed your report entitled Waste Cleanup: Status and
Implications of DOE's Compliance Agreements, (GAO-02-567). The report
with some minor corrections, accurately presents the current status of
our compliance agreements. Enclosed are our detailed comments on the
report.
We would like to express our appreciation for the extensive research
and analysis that GAO did in preparing this report. The depth of the
report represents the product of an enormous amount of work by many
dedicated people at GAO. Your extensive interactions with Environmental
Management staff were well received and the report reflects that
coordination.
Environmental Management has developed an aggressive plan of action to
change how the Department approaches its cleanup mandate, and this
report will be another factor utilized to support our new approach.
If you have any questions, please contact Mr. Eugene Schmitt, Acting
Deputy Assistant Secretary, for Policy, Planning and Budget, at (202)
586-8754.
Sincerely,
Signed by:
Jessie Hill Roberson:
Assistant Secretary for Environmental Management:
Enclosure:
[End of section]
Appendix III: Scope and Methodology:
To determine the types of compliance agreements and what progress DOE
is making in meeting milestone commitments, we administered a
questionnaire to all DOE sites with compliance agreements funded by
DOE‘s Environmental Management program. We defined a ’compliance
agreement“ as a legally enforceable agreement between DOE and another
party or parties that contained enforceable milestones defining cleanup
activities that DOE must achieve by specified or ascertainable dates and
that are funded by DOE‘s EM program. To determine the universe of
compliance agreements, we obtained a list of all EM-funded compliance
agreements from DOE. We also compared this list to EM sites listed on
the EPA‘s National Priorities List, which are required to have
compliance agreements implementing CERCLA requirements. We discussed
these agreements with staff from the DOE Chief Counsel‘s office and the
EM program to validate both the number of sites with agreements and the
number of agreements. We removed from our study any agreement that
did not contain enforceable milestones that DOE was required to meet. In
addition, we did not include RCRA permits in our universe because (1)
the great majority of DOE‘s cleanup work is covered under compliance
agreements and very little of that work is required under RCRA permits
and (2) cleanup activities required as a condition of RCRA permits are
generally also included in compliance agreements at DOE sites.
Some of the compliance agreements we identified had been subsequently
amended or replaced by other agreements. We included in the universe
milestones from the original agreements if they were unique to those
agreements and not repeated in the subsequent agreements. In addition,
five of the agreements are no longer active because all the milestones
associated with the agreements had been completed. We included those
agreements and their milestones in our study. For each DOE site having
one or more compliance agreement, we requested, for each agreement,
information on the type of agreement, the scope of cleanup activities
covered by the agreement, and information on the schedule milestones in
the agreement. We also asked officials at each site to verify that the
list of compliance agreements for their site was complete. We did not
independently verify the accuracy of the information provided by each
DOE site, but at the four sites we visited, we selectively tested the
reasonableness of the information by reviewing site records and
discussing compliance agreements with DOE officials. At some sites, DOE
officials were unable to provide exact numbers, especially concerning
the number of milestone dates that had been changed and the number of
milestones that would be completed in the future. In these cases, DOE
officials said the information provided represented their best
estimates.
To determine the extent that compliance with DOE agreements is
reflected in the DOE budget submitted to the Congress, we reviewed
numerous budget formulation documents at DOE sites and at DOE
headquarters, budgeting guidance and standards, and we analyzed
information from DOE‘s integrated planning and budgeting system. We
visited four of DOE‘s largest environmental management program
offices”the Richland, Idaho, Oak Ridge, and Savannah River operations
offices”to document how these offices include compliance agreement
requirements in their budget submittals to DOE headquarters. Although
sites develop estimates of the compliance costs associated with
compliance agreements as well as federal, state, or local environmental
laws and regulations, in this report, compliance costs are limited to
those costs associated with DOE‘s compliance agreements. To determine
how DOE headquarters uses site budget submittals, including compliance
requirements, in its final budget submittal to the Congress, we reviewed
budget documentation and interviewed officials at DOE‘s headquarters
office of the environmental management program and the Office of
Management and Budget.
To identify whether compliance agreements could be used to prioritize
cleanup work across DOE sites, we reviewed the compliance agreements,
interviewed DOE headquarters and site staff involved in the EM program
to determine how environmental risks are considered in carrying out the
cleanup program, and discussed the agreements with federal and state
regulators at the four sites we visited. We also reviewed various
studies and reports prepared by DOE and other organizations that
discussed risk-based decision-making in the EM program.
To assess the implications of compliance agreements on DOE‘s initiatives
to improve its EM program, we discussed the initiatives with DOE
managers and staff in headquarters, including the leader of DOE‘s
February 2002 report, A Review of the Environmental Management
Program. We also reviewed the proposal coming out of that report and
discussed it with staff at the four field offices we visited as well as
the regulators we interviewed about those sites. In addition, we
reviewed other related documents and reports as well as reports issued
by us and others on past EM management reform initiatives attempted or
implemented by DOE.
[End of section]
Appendix IV: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments:
GAO Contact:
Bill Swick (206) 287-4800:
Staff Acknowledgments:
In addition to the person named above Chris Abraham, Doreen Feldman,
Rachel Hesselink, Rich Johnson, Nancy Kintner-Meyer, Tom Perry, Ilene
Pollack, Laura Shumway, and Stan Stenersen made key contributions to
this report.
[End of section]
Footnotes:
[1] In this report, we use the term ’compliance agreement“ or
’agreement“ to mean any legally enforceable document containing
milestones defining cleanup activities that DOE must achieve by
specified or ascertainable dates. The term includes, but is not limited
to, Federal Facility Agreements, Interagency Agreements, settlement
agreements, consent orders, and compliance orders. It does not include
federal and state environmental requirements that are not implemented
by compliance agreements. Also, some cleanup work is required in
certain of DOE‘s RCRA permits that authorize waste treatment
operations. We did not include RCRA permits in our study because (1)
the great majority of DOE‘s cleanup work is covered by compliance
agreements and (2) cleanup work required by RCRA permits is generally
also included under the compliance agreements at those sites. Also in
this report, we use the term ’regulators“ to mean those federal and
state agencies that are parties to DOE‘s compliance agreements.
[2] Mixed wastes are wastes that contain both radioactive materials
subject to the Atomic Energy Act and hazardous wastes, such as
degreasing solvents.
[3] In a few instances, other stakeholders have become signatories to
compliance agreements in the settlement of ongoing litigation brought
against DOE.
[4] Five of the agreements containing 130 milestones were completed and
are no longer active. For the remaining agreements, the number of
milestones will increase over time because some of the agreements
provide for setting milestone dates periodically over the life of the
agreements rather than trying to establish all of the milestone dates
at the beginning of the agreements.
[5] The total number of milestones remaining to be completed cannot be
determined because the number of milestones changes over time as
milestones are added, dropped, or combined.
[6] A record of decision is a document used to select the method of
remedial action to be implemented at a site following the completion of
a feasibility study or an environmental impact statement.
[7] Transuranic waste contains man-made radioactive elements with
atomic numbers higher than that of uranium, such as plutonium.
[8] Although DOE generally agreed with the cost savings presented in
the inspector general‘s report in 1999, DOE is now stating that the
inspector general‘s analysis of cost savings was incomplete because the
analysis did not consider additional costs associated with suspending
spent nuclear fuel shipments.
[9] Sites develop estimates of the compliance cost associated with
compliance agreements, as well as federal, state, or local laws and
regulations. In this report, compliance costs are limited to those
costs associated with DOE‘s compliance agreements.
[10] These summaries are used to estimate the funding needs and planned
activities over the life of a project.
[11] Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation,
Peer Review of the U.S. Department of Energy‘s Use of Risk in Its
Prioritization Process, (New Brunswick, NJ: Dec. 15, 1999).
[12] The two operations offices with substantial increases--Richland
(from $951 million to $1.7 billion) and Oak Ridge (from $516 million to
$726 million)--reflect particular issues that emerged in the last
couple of years at those offices. At Hanford, funding has increased
primarily to build the $4 billion plant to vitrify high-level tank
wastes while at Oak Ridge funding was increased to deal with
revelations about longstanding problems at the Paducah and Portsmouth
Uranium Enrichment plants.
[13] U.S. Department of Energy, A Review of the Environmental
Management Program, (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 4, 2002).
[14] We currently have a review underway to assess the results of DOE‘s
contract reform initiatives.
[15] For a discussion of the Rocky Flats Closure Contract, see U.S.
General Accounting Office, Nuclear Cleanup: Progress Made at Rocky
Flats, but Closure by 2006 Is Unlikely, and Costs May Increase,
[hyperlink, http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-01-284] (Washington, D.C.:
Feb. 28, 2001).
[16] Currently, DOE classifies this high-level waste based on the
treatment process that created the waste.
[End of section]
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