Environmental Compliance

Reporting on DOD Military Construction and Repair Projects Can Be Improved Gao ID: NSIAD-98-33 December 8, 1997

The Pentagon budgeted more than $700 million for environmental compliance construction and repair projects to comply with environmental laws during fiscal years 1996 and 1997. Of this amount, $274 million was funded by military construction appropriations and the remainder was funded primarily by operation and maintenance appropriations. This report examines environmental compliance projects funded as construction or repair and (1) identifies Defense Department criteria for deciding which appropriation account is used for programming funds, (2) describes the process for programming funds, and (3) discusses reporting on future funding requirements.

GAO noted that: (1) the basis for determining which funding source should be used for funding environmental compliance construction and repair projects is set forth in laws and regulations; (2) the law requires military construction appropriations to be used for all construction projects costing over $500,000; (3) the law defines construction as the creation of complete and usable new facilities or complete and usable improvements to existing facilities on military installations; (4) in general, operation and maintenance appropriations are available to fund construction projects costing less than $500,000 and repairs of any value; (5) other appropriations such as research, development, test, and evaluation, may also be used in appropriate circumstances; (6) the programming process for environmental compliance construction or repair activities varies according to the project funding source; (7) under the process, the level of project justification detail that DOD provides to Congress is greater for military construction projects than for projects funded under other appropriations; (8) in general, any military construction project, including environmental compliance projects, is programmed, reviewed, budgeted, and funded individually; (9) projects to be funded from operation and maintenance appropriations are rolled up into a single amount for budgeting and funding purposes; (10) the law permits some smaller value military construction projects to be carried out as unspecified minor construction; (11) these are budgeted as a single amount; (12) DOD has made some improvements to its annual compliance reporting by identifying specific projects that will cost over $300,000; (13) DOD has improved the detailed budget information provided to Congress by identifying recurring and nonrecurring compliance costs by appropriation; and (14) however, information provided to Congress in this report does not identify proposed construction and repair projects costing over $300,000 and their funding sources.

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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