Hazardous Waste Sites

State Cleanup Status and Its Implications for Federal Policy Gao ID: RCED-89-164 August 21, 1989

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the status of state cleanups of hazardous waste sites not on the National Priorities List (NPL) and whether the cleanups met Superfund Program standards.

GAO found that: (1) although 47 states reported about 28,000 known or suspected Superfund sites, many had not identified all of their sites; (2) 42 states reported inspecting about 7,800 sites and 43 reported cleaning up 1,736 sites and had begun work on another 760 sites; (3) six states completed about four-fifths of their cleanup activities, while about one-third of the states did not complete any cleanups; (4) the three most active states established major hazardous waste site cleanup programs, had laws to compel responsible parties to clean up sites, authorized at least $100 million for cleanup, and employed 100 or more people in their programs; (5) of the 41 reporting states, only 11 had more than $5 million available for non-Superfund sites; (6) at the 17 non-Superfund sites GAO analyzed, state cleanups generally met the federal contaminant levels required for Superfund sites; (7) there were no federal standards for about one-third of the contaminants in groundwater and none for many soil contaminants at the sites reviewed; (8) states set cleanup levels at 11 of the 17 sites without performing formal risk assessments, most states selected remedies without fully considering Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-required alternatives, and only 1 state considered the full range of remedies; and (9) although EPA provided technical assistance to states in the form of standards, guidance, training and advice on some sites, states needed more information on health effects of contaminants, protective cleanup levels, risk assessments, remedy selection, and cleanup technologies.

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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