EPA Should Help Small Communities Cope With Federal Pollution Control Requirements

GAO selected nine small communities in New England and the Pacific Northwest to do an in-depth analysis of the social and economic problems caused by federally funded sewage systems. GAO also obtained information on an additional 20 communities affected by two or more federal pollution control requirements, to determine if the multiple pollution control requirements caused problems in these communities.

Small communities face higher per capita costs and a lack of technical expertise in complying with federal environmental regulations. GAO believes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) must make a special effort to help these communities. Among the problems discovered were inadequate justification for building new sewer systems, social and economic hardships, frustration by nontechnical local officials who are responsible for these highly technical projects, and overbuilt sewage systems. Many of these problems could be eliminated by better EPA review of project plans and more technical assistance for small communities. The increased costs of complying with multiple requirements of recent federal pollution legislation compound the problems small communities face in meeting the requirements. GAO believes EPA needs to experiment with comprehensive approaches to pollution control for small communities such as: federal block grants for the most pressing environmental problems, a special technical assistance coordinator to assist communities in planning programs, phased implementation of federal requirements when concurrent implementation would be too costly, and suspension and waiver of requirements when costs are high and the potential environmental benefits are minimal or the project is environmentally harmful.

Recommendations

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

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