Federal Facilities

Consistent Relative Risk Evaluations Needed for Prioritizing Cleanups Gao ID: RCED-96-150 June 7, 1996

Both the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and federal agencies that own or operate seriously contaminated facilities help assign priorities for cleanup under regulations of the Superfund program. GAO found that the Superfund program does not fully and consistently identify the most contaminated federal facilities as the highest priorities for cleanups. Some federal agencies have not finished identifying the universe of contaminated facilities and preliminarily assessing the extent of their contamination. In addition, EPA regions have not completed their evaluations of the facilities that the agencies have reported to them, and EPA headquarters has not developed guidance to ensure that the regions consistently evaluate the most severely contaminated facilities first. Even after a region has evaluated a facility and determined that it warrants inclusion on the National Priorities List--EPA's list of the nation's highest priorities for further study and possible cleanup--that facility may be omitted if a state does not agree to the listing or the facility is being cleaned up under another legal authority.

GAO found that: (1) the Superfund program does not completely and consistently identify the federal facilities presenting the greatest risks to public health and the environment; (2) without a complete inventory of contaminated sites, adequate data on the risks at these sites, and consistent policy guidance, agencies cannot fully prioritize cleanup activities; (3) the National Priorities List (NPL) does not include all eligible contaminated sites and the Hazard Ranking System does not provide sufficient information to rank contaminated facilities on the basis of risk; (4) federal agencies responsible for cleanups do not use a consistent approach to assess relative risk; (5) to help set cleanup priorities and make funding decisions, DOD developed a risk-ranking tool to categorize contaminated sites; (6) DOE uses a qualitative, facility-based approach to evaluate contaminated sites and prioritize cleanups; (7) Interior uses a centralized priority-setting mechanism in the later stages of the Superfund process to rank its contaminated facilities; and (8) while individual agencies use their own risk-assessment processes, it would be more cost-effective for agencies to use a consistent, national approach to rank risks and identify high-priority sites.

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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