Environmental Protection

Funds Obligated for Completed Superfund Projects Gao ID: RCED-98-232 July 21, 1998

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) relies heavily on contracts and assistance agreements for the Superfund program. Superfund contracts are awarded to private businesses to clean up hazardous waste sites, supervise the cleanups done by others, and provide technical and scientific support. In April 1997, GAO reported that EPA had $249 million in unspent obligated funds available for deobligation on more than 6,000 Superfund contract work orders and assistance agreements that were completed before 1997. (See GAO/T-RCED-97-134.) GAO recommended that EPA develop a strategy for identifying, deobligating, and recovering unspent funds. This report (1) determines EPA's progress in recovering the unspent funds on the inactive Superfund contracts and assistance agreements that GAO identified and (2) determines whether any additional funds that expired during 1997 for Superfund contracts and assistance agreements are available for deobligation.

GAO noted that: (1) EPA has made a concentrated effort to recover the unspent funds that GAO identified for work orders and assistance agreements for Superfund contracts that were completed prior to 1997; (2) of the $249 million that GAO identified, EPA has recovered $210 million; (3) of the approximately $39 million remaining, EPA has detailed plans to recover about $26 million during fiscal year (FY) 1998; (4) EPA plans to recover the remaining $13 million in FY 1999; (5) EPA has an additional $125 million available for deobligation from contracts and assistance agreements that expired in 1997; (6) although EPA had identified and plans to recover $10 million, GAO identified an additional $115 million, which also expired in 1997, that can be recovered; (7) EPA did not identify the additional $115 million because its analysis, which was based on data for June 1997, covered contracts that expired prior to July 1, 1997; (8) typically, in the second half of a calendar year, significant amounts become available for deobligation; and (9) of the additional amount available for deobligation and recovery, $109 million derives mainly from contract work orders that expired during the last 6 months of 1997 and over $6 million from assistance agreements.

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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