Pollution Prevention

EPA Should Reexamine the Objectives and Sustainability of State Programs Gao ID: PEMD-94-8 January 25, 1994

GAO found major differences in the operations of the 105 state pollution programs it identified nationwide. Both regulatory and nonregulatory programs exist--the former require pollution prevention planning by industry while the latter promote voluntary prevention via technical assistance, education and outreach to industry. GAO discovered, however, that many state programs claiming to conduct pollution prevention activities were inordinately involved in waste recycling, treatment, or disposal. These programs obtain funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that rewards their after-the-fact strategies without examining whether prevention was possible. This is inconsistent with the policy established by the Pollution Prevention Act. GAO also found that many programs depend on EPA funding for their existence, even though this funding is not expected to be permanent. Thus, the state programs expected to implement pollution prevention were instead concentrating on other strategies and, in any case, do not appear likely to survive once federal money is withdrawn.

GAO found that: (1) 20 percent of state pollution prevention programs are regulatory; (2) many companies do not actively participate in nonregulatory programs, since they generally require more technical assistance; (3) companies in need of pollution prevention assistance often do not receive it unless they seek it out for themselves; (4) state progress reports cannot be aggregated to form a national profile because the indicators used to monitor progress vary greatly among programs; and (5) EPA cannot effectively evaluate state pollution prevention programs because some programs have goals unrelated to pollution prevention and many companies lack staff to gather data on program effectiveness.

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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