Hazardous Waste

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reported on 17 federal civilian agencies' implementation of Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) provisions, specifically whether: (1) agencies are identifying and reporting their hazardous waste handlers to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the states; (2) EPA and the states are inspecting federal facilities to ensure that handlers are complying with RCRA requirements; (3) handlers are complying with RCRA regulations; and (4) enforcement actions are compelling agencies to correct problems.

GAO found that: (1) the agencies identified 247 waste handlers and were confident that they had identified the most significant waste handlers and reported them to EPA or the states; (2) several agencies estimated that numerous facilities need evaluation; (3) agencies had inspected all of the major treatment, storage, and disposal handlers at least once; (4) many of the handlers had violated RCRA requirements; (5) over half of the facilities cited for violations were not in compliance with RCRA requirements 6 months to 3 years later due to limited agency knowledge of the requirements and lack of agency emphasis on RCRA; (6) in the past year, agencies have increased their emphasis on RCRA programs; and (7) EPA plans to expand its inspection coverage of hazardous waste handlers, provide federal agencies with more information on RCRA requirements, work closer with agencies on the program, and revise its compliance strategy to incorporate specific time frames for issuing compliance orders.

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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