EPA's Inventory of Potential Hazardous Waste Sites Is Incomplete
RCED-85-75
Published: Mar 26, 1985. Publicly Released: May 03, 1985.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the effectiveness of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state programs in determining the extent of hazardous waste cleanup problems. EPA and the states are required by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to complete a nationwide inventory of hazardous disposal sites. In addition, EPA is authorized to evaluate and clean up such sites. GAO focused on: (1) site discovery activities carried out by EPA and the states; (2) whether states are informing EPA of sites they discover; and (3) how federal and state site evaluation and cleanup roles are defined.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental Protection Agency | The Administrator, EPA, should develop a plan laying out: (1) what specific steps EPA intends to take to complete a comprehensive hazardous waste site inventory envisioned by section 3012 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; (2) what priorities and resources EPA plans to devote to this effort; (3) what the states' role should be; and (4) how long it will take to accomplish. |
EPA believes that it already has an effective process to discover new sites. It sees no need to develop a comprehensive site discovery strategy. Rather, EPA will continue to emphasize site evaluation and cleanup over new site discovery efforts.
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| Environmental Protection Agency | The Administrator, EPA, should encourage the states to report the existence of hazardous sites by stressing the importance and need for EPA evaluation of the sites and EPA emergency or other response where necessary. |
EPA has informally encouraged its regions to tell states to report newly discovered sites. EPA could provide no documentation. GAO envisioned in its recommendation a more formal notification to states.
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| Environmental Protection Agency | The Administrator, EPA, should emphasize to the EPA regions the need to incorporate into the EPA inventory sites that are reported by the states. |
EPA has informally encouraged its regions to incorporate state reported sites into the inventory. EPA could provide no documentation. GAO envisioned in its recommendation a more formal notification to regions.
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Environmental legislationEnvironmental monitoringstate relationsHazardous substancesPollution controlReporting requirementsWaste disposalHazardous waste sitesHazardous wastesInventories