Environmental Compliance

From 1929 to 1975, an estimated 1.4 billion pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) were produced in the United States. The military services have significant amounts of PCBs in equipment, such as electrical transformers and capacitors, on their installations. However, because the Defense Department (DOD) has not provided specific guidance on the identification and replacement of PCB items, each service has been free to establish its own program. Accordingly, service efforts to identify and replace PCB items vary considerably. More than 15 years after enactment of the Toxic Substances Control Act, which cited PCB as a threat to human health and restricted the manufacturer to items containing this substance, some military installations are still not meeting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations on monitoring, storing, and disposing of PCB items. GAO found (1) improper storage of PCB items, (2) transformers with previously undetected leaks, (3) inadequate monitoring of known PCB items, (4) slow responses to PCB spills, and (5) inadequate or incomplete documentation for PCB disposals. Although EPA periodically inspects some installations, the correction of deficiencies was basically left to the individual installation, and some had been slow to begin and complete corrective action.

GAO found that: (1) because DOD has not provided specific Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidance on the identification of PCB items, many installations do not know how many PCB items are in use at their specific bases; (2) because there is no legal, regulatory, or DOD guidance, service efforts to replace PCB items vary considerably; (3) some installations do not meet EPA requirements for monitoring PCB items or for storing and disposing of PCB items removed from service; (4) EPA periodically inspects some DOD installations to see if they are complying with EPA regulations, but it generally relies on the assurances of the installations that any deficiencies identified are corrected; (5) DOD officials have stated that budget constraints sometimes cause difficulty in modifying facilities, especially ones that would not be modified once PCB items were eliminated; (6) DOD installations have not properly documented the shipment and disposal of PCB items; and (7) some PCB items with unacceptable levels of contaminants have been salvaged and sold to disposal companies.

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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