Superfund

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) enforcement of the Superfund program, focusing on: (1) its process for identifying liable and financially viable parties to hold responsible for cleaning up Superfund sites; (2) enforcement tools, including negotiations, unilateral administrative orders, and mixed funding and de minimis settlements; and (3) recovery of site cleanup costs.

GAO found that: (1) although the program's success depended largely on finding the liable parties to fund cleanups, EPA had not found the liable parties for one-third of the sites ready for cleanup; (2) many of the searches were incomplete because of data collection deficiencies and poorly conducted interviews; (3) although EPA took some corrective actions, it needed to keep better track of responsible party information, systematically identify searches needing to be redone, and promote a toll-free hot line for reporting the identity of suspected responsible parties; (4) search delays due to staff shortages have hampered EPA efforts to find responsible parties willing to finance cleanups; (5) EPA used administrative orders only sparingly to force action or close lengthy negotiations; (6) a legislative requirement that orders were only enforceable upon demonstration of imminent and substantial endangerment was a barrier to EPA use of administrative orders; (7) EPA had collected only 35 percent of the costs it hoped to recover by 1991, because it considered cost recovery a low priority; (8) EPA regions issued letters demanding payment from 4 to 18 months late, which cost the government interest income and reduced the program's credibility; (9) EPA excluded various indirect costs totalling $800 million from its definition of recoverable costs; (10) EPA cost recovery actions remained uncertain because legislation did not specifically authorize recovery of indirect costs and court actions on the issue were inconsistent; and (11) although EPA planned greater program enforcement, staffing constraints contributed to many of the problems.

Recommendations

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

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