Superfund

After 12 years and more than $15 billion spent on the Superfund program, questions remain about the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) progress in cleaning up hazardous waste sites. EPA has placed 1,275 sites with the most serious problems on a cleanup priority list. EPA has evaluated the potential risks of many of these sites and is now cleaning up 374 of them. This report (1) discusses EPA's efforts to conduct cleanups, including the type and extent of cleanup work at sites deleted from the priority list or sites where cleanup construction is complete, and (2) evaluates the challenges that EPA will face in managing and monitoring these sites. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Superfund: Cleanups Nearing Completion, Future Challenges, and Possible Cleanup Approaches, by Peter F. Guerrero, Associate Director for Environmental Protection Issues, before the Subcommittee on Superfund, Recycling, and Solid Waste Management, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. GAO/T-RCED-93-69, Sept. 9, 1993 (24 pages).

GAO found that: (1) significant amounts of hazardous wastes have been removed or controlled at 149 EPA Superfund hazardous waste sites; (2) EPA removal and remedial actions including landfill waste disposal, waste capping, and the use of contamination treatment technology have addressed long-term health risks and significant surface, soil, and groundwater contamination problems; (3) although most cleanup actions involved surface waste treatment, some sites did not require remedial action because EPA already addressed site risks; (4) other groundwater contamination problems required long-term treatment and monitoring; (5) EPA completed 125 separate removal actions at over half of the 149 sites and averted additional site and environmental contamination by removing waste from sites or constructing barriers to prevent access to waste; (6) despite these accomplishments, EPA needs to improve its reporting of cleanup work performed at sites on the National Priorities List; (7) EPA, states, and responsible parties can expect increased demands on cleanup resources because current and future Superfund sites will require complex cleanup efforts and long-term monitoring and maintenance; and (8) although states have increasingly challenged EPA interpretation of legislation requiring them to fund all costs for operating and maintaining completed or deleted sites, recent court rulings have upheld the EPA interpretation.

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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