Superfund

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) cost estimates for the Superfund program are neither reliable nor useful in overseeing costs or making funding decisions. EPA is often a year or more late in issuing its required annual cost estimate for the program, which lessens its usefulness to Congress. Also, EPA's estimates for fiscal years 1989 and 1990 (1) omitted billions of dollars needed to clean up sites that will soon be placed on the national priorities list and (2) did not reflect realistic costs in completing the ongoing cleanup at existing hazardous waste sites. Efforts by EPA's Chief Financial Officer and Inspector General to verify Superfund cost estimates have fallen short.

GAO found that: (1) EPA Superfund cost estimates are not reliable or useful for overseeing costs or making funding decisions; (2) EPA substantially understates Superfund cost estimates and is often over a year late in issuing required cost estimates; (3) Superfund cost estimates often exclude future National Priorities List (NPL) sites and do not reflect realistic costs to complete site cleanup efforts; (4) EPA does not use available forecast management techniques to estimate future costs; (5) Congress has authorized $15.2 billion for Superfund, but EPA has advised Congress that it would need $26.4 billion for hazardous waste cleanup; (6) EPA estimates that an additional 1,000 Superfund clean-up sites by 2000 would require about $11 billion and total Superfund costs are likely greater than EPA reports; and (7) the EPA Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Inspector General do not monitor the reliability of Superfund cost estimates prepared by program managers.

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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