Environmental Protection

The Defense Department (DOD) and other federal facilities are subject to the same environmental, safety, and health laws and regulations as private industry. DOD spends about $5 billion annually to fulfill its environmental mission. This report discusses (1) the time lag between obligations and expenditures for environmental cleanup and its impact on achieving actual cleanup, (2) the basis for funding overseas cleanup, (3) DOD's proposal to enter into multistate cooperative agreements for technology certification, and (4) DOD's need for and efforts toward uniform tracking and management of programs involving compliance with environmental laws and regulations.

GAO noted that: (1) of the $1.413 billion made available for environmental cleanup through the fiscal year (FY) 1996 Defense Environmental Restoration Account, DOD reported that it obligated $1.409 billion by the end of that fiscal year, and expended $385 million; (2) as a result, reported expenditures for actual cleanup have not proceeded as rapidly as the obligations shown in DOD's annual cleanup report to Congress; (3) the primary reasons cited by the defense components for cleaning up overseas sites have been responses to concerns about U.S. personnel health and safety, and compliance with host nation laws or agreements and U.S. standards; (4) Defense components reported that $102 million had been obligated for overseas cleanup during fiscal years 1993-96; (5) DOD told GAO that it plans to enter into cooperative agreements with states and local governments regarding the certification of environmental technologies; (6) DOD identified candidate technologies for such agreements and expects to sign the first agreement by the end of FY 1997; (7) DOD officials have not estimated the costs for expected cooperative agreements in fiscal years 1997 or 1998 because they do not view the use of these agreements as a separate program and they expect cost savings to offset expenditures; (8) DOD compliance project and cost data, as reported in the 1996 Environmental Quality Annual Report to Congress, are not complete or accurate; (9) the DOD-wide funding totals for environmental compliance did not account for all funds or major projects; (10) the report omitted about $250 million in funding and failed to include some major Navy projects; (11) also, compliance activities with widely varying characteristics are now being combined in DOD's classification categories; (12) projects with compliance milestones in the year 2000 and beyond are now included with installations already out of compliance; (13) thus, DOD, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Congress lack the data for environmental compliance they need to conduct oversight functions; and (14) because DOD has indicated a reluctance to take the necessary actions to correct the problems noted in the report, GAO is suggesting that Congress may wish to consider requiring DOD to ensure that the problems are addressed.

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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