Superfund

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Superfund program has been criticized for a number of problems, including the pace and the cost of cleaning up hazardous waste sites, the agency's approach for holding waste contributors liable for cleaning up sites, and the overall effectiveness of the program. In 1993, EPA began implementing a series of 62 administrative reforms. GAO was asked to review EPA's reforms to determine their demonstrated results and evaluate the performance measures the agency uses to gauge these results and to identify legislative changes to the program that either the agency or key stakeholders believe are still necessary. Overall, EPA and stakeholders agree that the Superfund program has improved and the administrative reforms have collectively contributed to this improvement.

GAO noted that: (1) EPA claims and stakeholders agree that, in general, the Superfund program has improved and the administrative reforms have collectively contributed to this improvement; (2) however, GAO determined that, for a majority of the 62 reforms, it is difficult for EPA to demonstrate the extent to which they are working and have met the goals set for them--to make the program faster, fairer, and more efficient; (3) while maintaining that all the reforms are important, EPA reform managers acknowledged that 42 reforms did not have a fundamental effect, and EPA could not easily collect the data to measure the results achieved for most of them; (4) 20 reforms had a fundamental effect, and for these reforms: (a) EPA's performance measures demonstrated that 7 had achieved benefits, such as dollar savings--EPA has saved $70 million to date by identifying less costly cleanup alternatives--and greater community involvement in cleanups; (b) EPA's measures counted the number of times that 7 were implemented but did not demonstrate the results achieved; and (c) EPA did not have measures to demonstrate the results that 6 had achieved; (5) EPA's data for the 14 fundamental and measurable reforms show two trends suggesting that the progress made to date may be eroding; (6) the implementation rates for almost half of these reforms peaked in fiscal year 1997 and declined in subsequent years; (7) the implementation rates for some reforms varied widely among the regions, possibly indicating inconsistent application; (8) stakeholders identified regional inconsistency as a problem with some reforms; (9) therefore, better measurement and oversight of the key reforms, as well as better understanding of the reasons for regional variation in the implementation of some, could help EPA obtain the maximum benefits possible from its reform initiative; (10) EPA and stakeholders agree that targeted legislative changes would do more than EPA's administrative reforms to protect certain parties from the current Superfund law's liability provisions, however, they disagree on the extent of change; (11) according to EPA, it is not seeking any legislation to codify its reforms, but it would support legislative proposals to limit liability for some parties that stakeholders have identified; (12) these parties include prospective purchasers of contaminated property and owners who are not responsible for or aware of contamination on their property; and (13) EPA does not see a need for other legislative changes, such as limiting liability for small businesses, because it believes its reforms have created the tools needed to provide relief for these parties.

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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