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Superfund: EPA Can Improve Its Monitoring of Superfund Expenditures

RCED-99-139 Published: May 11, 1999. Publicly Released: Jun 10, 1999.
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Highlights

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Superfund Program expenditures, focusing on: (1) the relative shares of Superfund expenditures for contractor cleanup work, site-specific support, and non-site-specific support; (2) the activities carried out with the EPA's cleanup support spending, particularly its non-site-specific spending; and (3) EPA's efforts to monitor and analyze how its regions and headquarters units spend Superfund resources, particularly the distribution of expenditures among contractor cleanup work, site-specific support, and non-site-specific support.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Environmental Protection Agency In order to better identify opportunities for potential cost savings, the Administrator, EPA, should require the Assistant Administrator for Solid Waste and Emergency Response to expand the monitoring of Superfund expenditures to regularly analyze the breakdown of expenditures in terms of contractor cleanup work, site-specific spending, and non-site-specific spending. These analyses should compare such spending shares among EPA's regional and headquarters units, and significant differences should be further analyzed to identify the underlying causes and to determine whether cost-saving corrective actions are warranted.
Closed – Implemented
In EPA's official response, the agency agreed with the recommendation and stated that it was in the process of implementing it. In an April 11, 2001, letter to GAO, EPA described several actions it has taken to implement GAO's recommendation. Specifically, EPA has organized Superfund obligation and expenditure data into site-specific and non-site-specific categories. EPA stated that information has proven useful to senior managers in allocating Superfund resources and evaluating the program. Consequently, this recommendation has been implemented and should be closed.

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Topics

Administrative costsBudget outlaysContract costsEnvironmental monitoringFunds managementHazardous substancesPollution controlWaste disposalWaste managementHazardous waste sites