Hazardous Waste

GAO discussed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) progress in implementing Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) provisions to determine whether EPA was: (1) identifying and regulating hazardous wastes; (2) ensuring RCRA facilities' compliance with regulatory controls; and (3) encouraging waste minimization.

GAO found that: (1) EPA made limited progress in identifying and regulating hazardous wastes due to its changing approaches, inadequate resources, and absence of systematic implementation procedures; (2) Congress enacted prescriptive amendments to RCRA with numerous deadlines that imposed specific controls if EPA failed to meet them; (3) EPA completed action on less than half of the 76 specific deadlines Congress imposed, although it made some progress on the others; and (4) although EPA was developing a plan to specify waste identification tasks and identify needed resources, it had no timetable for completion or implementation. GAO also found that: (1) both private and government-owned facilities failed to comply with EPA regulations in the areas of groundwater monitoring, closure and post-closure, and financial assurance requirements; (2) although EPA developed a strategy requiring 90-percent compliance by 1989, it did not hold its regions or states accountable for meeting the goal; (3) although EPA was working to determine, by the end of 1990, the need for a mandatory waste minimization program, it had no set overall quantifiable goals for waste reduction due to its lack of data; and (4) EPA has been unable to develop comprehensive and reliable data to assess hazardous waste legislation, evaluate trends in regulatory compliance and waste minimization, and develop waste management priorities.

Recommendations

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

Director: Team: Phone: