Superfund

Further EPA Management Action Is Needed To Reduce Legal Expenses Gao ID: RCED-94-90 January 13, 1994

Parties responsible for pollution at hazardous waste sites are liable for any cleanup costs. Responsible parties also incur costs, especially legal expenses, when they allocate responsibilities among themselves, settle with the government, or litigate liability for cleanups. At some sites, hundreds and even thousands of parties are involved in allocating cleanup costs and litigating liability. To reduce these costs, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has several tools at its disposal, ranging from expedited settlements for small-volume waste contributors to the use of neutral third parties to help resolve liability and cost allocation problems. This report (1) determines how often EPA has used these tools, (2) identifies any impediments to their use, and (3) assesses EPA's recent actions to increase use of these tools.

GAO found that: (1) EPA has not fully utilized its settlement tools or encouraged the use of the settlement tools by its field offices; (2) EPA has completed de minimis settlements at 78 sites, prepared nonbinding allocations of responsibility (NBAR) at 5 sites, used mixed-funding arrangements at 16 sites, and used alternative dispute resolutions (ADR) at 35 sites; (3) EPA has focused on getting responsible-party-financed cleanups underway quickly and views the settlement tools as burdensome and difficult to implement because of restrictive administrative procedures; (4) EPA has improved its administrative procedures in response to widespread complaints about high transaction costs; and (5) EPA needs to ensure the long-term use of the settlement tools by assessing the total number of regional sites that are eligible to use the settlement tools, targeting resources to expand the tools' use, setting goals for the use of each tool, and actively promoting the use of each tool among potentially responsible parties (PRP).

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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