Environmental Protection

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has had long-standing problems in building effective partnerships with the states, which have the lead responsibility for implementing many environmental programs. Among the key issues affecting the EPA-state relationship have been concerns that EPA is inconsistent in its oversight across regions, sometimes micromanages state programs, does not provide enough technical support for state programs, and often does not adequately consult with states before making key decisions affecting them. In 1995, EPA established the National Environmental Performance Partnership System, a key element of which was EPA's commitment to give states with strong environmental performance greater flexibility and autonomy in running their environmental programs. This report (1) identifies the status of grants and agreements made under the system between EPA and the states, (2) examines progress by EPA and the states in developing results-oriented performance measures to be incorporated into system agreements and grants to the states, (3) examines how EPA oversight may or may not be changing in states that are participating in the system, and (4) discusses the extent to which the use of these performance partnership agreements and grants has yielded expected benefits.

GAO noted that: (1) state participation in NEPPS grew from 6 pilot states in its initial year in fiscal year (FY) 1996 to 45 states by the end of FY 1998; (2) of that number, 31 states had both Performance Partnership Agreements and Performance Partnership Grants with EPA in 1998; 12 states had grants only; 2 states had agreements only; and 5 states did not participate at all; (3) nationwide, for that year, $217 million of $745 million in state environmental program grants was consolidated into Performance Partnership Grants; (4) EPA and the states agree on the importance of measuring the outcomes of environmental activities rather than just the activities themselves; (5) however, the development of these measures has been impeded by a number of technical challenges; (6) in addition, EPA and the states have had to resolve fundamental disagreements over a number of issues; (7) despite these barriers, EPA and state leaders have managed to agree on a set of core measures for FY 2000 that are widely regarded by EPA and state officials as significantly improved from those negotiated in previous years; (8) the initial expectation that participation in NEPPS would be accompanied by reduced federal oversight of states has thus far been realized to a limited degree; (9) a number of instances were identified among the six participating states GAO visited where oversight reduction did accompany participation in the system; (10) however, in other cases cited by both state and EPA regional officials: (a) decreased oversight could either not be linked directly to NEPPS participation; or (b) oversight had either remained the same or increased; (11) EPA and state participants nonetheless cited a number of benefits associated with NEPPS; and (12) yet while participants from each state indicated that their participation in the voluntary program would probably continue, they also consistently expressed the view that the benefits of the program should be greater; that the program has yet to achieve its potential; and that improvements are needed.

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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