Recommendation: The Secretary of Energy should direct DOE's Office of Environmental Management to develop a program-wide strategy that outlines how DOE will direct available resources to address human health and environmental risks across and within sites. (Recommendation 1)

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open
Priority recommendation

Comments: As of February 2020, DOE's Office of Environmental Management has not developed a program-wide strategy that addresses this recommendation. DOE officials said they are "developing a strategic options analysis to evaluate the current approaches to cleanup and other recently identified opportunities across the complex that could reduce risk and life-cycle costs through more efficient and innovative approaches." According to DOE officials, the analysis will consider risk-based approaches across sites, with the goal of reducing human health and environmental risks and the associated environmental liability.

Recommendation: The Secretary of Energy should direct DOE's Office of Environmental Management to submit in EM's annually required Future-Years Defense Environmental Management Plan all mandated requirements, as well as information on annual growth in environmental liability estimates by site, the key factors causing that growth, and an explanation of significant differences between environmental liability estimates and life cycle cost estimates. (Recommendation 2)

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open

Comments: As of February 2020, DOE's Office of Environmental Management has not implemented this recommendation. DOE officials stated that DOE will coordinate with the Office of Management and Budget on the preparation of the Future-Years Defense Environmental Management Plan, or other reporting, to supplement Congressional Budget documentation. Officials also stated that EM is currently undertaking an analysis of EM's environmental liability growth.

Recommendation: The Secretary of Energy should direct DOE's Office of Environmental Management to disclose the funding EM needs to meet all of its schedule milestones called for in compliance agreements in, for example, supplemental reports or the annual Future-Years Defense Environmental Management Plan. (Recommendation 3)

Agency: Department of Energy
Status: Open

Comments: As of February 2020, DOE's Office of Environmental Management has not implemented this recommendation. DOE officials stated that DOE will coordinate with the Office of Management and Budget to include such information in the Future-Years Defense Environmental Management Plan, or another appropriate report.

Recommendation: The Director of BLM should require cognizant officials in headquarters and state offices to conduct top-level reviews of field offices' monitoring of oil and gas lease suspensions, as well as of official lease files and databases to ensure they are current and complete. (Recommendation 3)

Agency: Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management
Status: Open

Comments: BLM concurred with this recommendation. However, the Bureau has yet to provide information concerning the current status of this recommendation. We will update the recommendation's status when we receive such information.

Recommendation: The Director of the Bureau of Land Management should develop a policy to ensure that field offices consistently track exception data.

Agency: Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management
Status: Open

Comments: In June 2019, BLM issued a memo called "Documentation and Tracking Requirements for Waiver, Exceptions, and Modifications for Fluid Mineral Exploration and Development Activities." The memo states that BLM is updating its guidance for tracking waivers, exceptions, and modifications of fluid minerals stipulations and Conditions of Approval (COA) to ensure that these requests are consistently processed and documented until BLM completes database enhancements to its Automated Fluid Minerals Support System 2 to perform this function. To ensure consistent documentation, BLM has developed an "Exceptions Tracking Sheet" that BLM staff are to use when making decisions. Information captured on the tracking sheet include: field office, state, U.S. well number, exception decision date, COA or lease stipulation (LS) , category of COA or LS (e.g. air, community, wildlife), and the specific COA or LS involved. Additionally, the associated environmental analyses, documents, and authorized officer's decision must be consistent with guidance found in Chapter IV of BLM's Planning for Fluid Mineral Resources Handbook (H-1624-1). In August 2019, GAO requested additional information to support the implementation of the recommendation. In December 2019, Interior officials stated that it would implement the recommendation by August 2020.

Recommendation: The Director of the Bureau of Land Management should develop bureau-wide written procedures for consistently considering and clearly documenting the information and processes used to make exception decisions.

Agency: Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management
Status: Open

Comments: In June 2019, BLM issued a memo called "Documentation and Tracking Requirements for Waiver, Exceptions, and Modifications for Fluid Mineral Exploration and Development Activities." The memo states that BLM is updating its guidance for tracking waivers, exceptions, and modifications of fluid minerals stipulations and Conditions of Approval (COA) to ensure that these requests are consistently processed and documented until BLM completes database enhancements to its Automated Fluid Minerals Support System 2 to perform this function. To ensure consistent documentation, BLM has developed an "Exceptions Tracking Sheet" that BLM staff are to use when making decisions. Information captured on the tracking sheet include: field office, state, U.S. well number, exception decision date, COA or lease stipulation (LS) , category of COA or LS (e.g. air, community, wildlife), and the specific COA or LS involved. Additionally, the associated environmental analyses, documents, and authorized officer's decision must be consistent with guidance found in Chapter IV of BLM's Planning for Fluid Mineral Resources Handbook (H-1624-1). In August 2019, GAO requested additional information to support the implementation of the recommendation. In December 2019, Interior officials stated that it would implement the recommendation by August 2020.

Recommendation: The Director of the Bureau of Land Management should direct field offices to make the results of exception request decisions available to the public, such as on BLM's public website.

Agency: Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management
Status: Open

Comments: In July 2019, Interior officials stated that the BLM does not intend to make an exception tracking spreadsheet available to the public. According to Interior officials, the regulations at 43 CFR 3101.1-4 do not require it, and public posting is only applicable to waivers and modifications, not exceptions. Interior's position has been that the public can ask for this information in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Interior officials explained that the main concern in making an exception tracking spreadsheet available to the public is that a single consolidated tracking spreadsheet would require constant updates and posting to Interior's website. Since the numbers can change daily, any posted updates would only provide a brief snap shot which will not be meaningful. Interior officials stated that the BLM will aim to address this item in future database design enhancements in order to obtain a permanent tracking solution. We will update this recommendation when we have additional information from BLM.

Recommendation: The Director of the Bureau of Land Management should clarify guidance related to documentation of environmental inspections to ensure that inspections are documented in a manner that indicates whether all permit requirements were checked as part of the inspection.

Agency: Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management
Status: Open

Comments: In August 2016, Interior officials stated that three of six corrective actions are substantially complete and that efforts are ongoing to clarify guidance related to documentation of environmental inspections with a target date for implementation of December 31, 2018. In May 2020, Interior officials stated the revised target date for implementation is September 30, 2020, at which time BLM will issue updated policies and procedures.

Recommendation: The Director of the Bureau of Land Management should provide additional guidance to field offices on how to collect and use data collected during monitoring inspections and, in doing so, determine and implement an approach for using the data to assess the effectiveness of the agency's mitigation efforts, including its best management practices.

Agency: Department of the Interior: Bureau of Land Management
Status: Open

Comments: In August 2018, Interior officials stated that efforts to provide guidance to field offices on how to collect and use date are ongoing with correction actions 10 percent complete. In May 2020, officials stated that they have a target date for implementation of December 31, 2020.

Recommendation: The Secretary of the Interior should direct the Director of the Bureau of Land Management to take steps, including making changes to AFMSS, and in any new system that replaces AFMSS, to improve the ability of staff to identify wells that are a high priority for environmental inspection and to incorporate information on the inspection history of wells into the environmental inspection prioritization process.

Agency: Department of the Interior
Status: Open

Comments: BLM concurred with the recommendation and has initiated action to update its application for permit to drill (APD) permit processing system. This new system will be known as AFMSS II and, when fully implemented, may address GAO's recommendations. Currently, BLM's actions are insufficient to close this recommendation because they have not completed the updates to AFMISS. Specifically, BLM has not completed its update of AFMSS II to cover environmental inspections. We will continue to follow up with BLM as the agency continues to take action to improve its well tracking system. BLM said it intends to update AFMSS II to cover environmental issues and projects that the remaining AFMSS II related tasks ensuring the system's full deployment will be completed by March 2020. In October 2019, we requested an update on BLM's timeframes.

Recommendation: The Secretary of the Interior should direct the Director of the Bureau of Land Management to take steps to ensure that environmental violations or problems and enforcement actions are documented in a consistent manner.

Agency: Department of the Interior
Status: Open

Comments: In August 2018, BLM informed us that the agency has taken several corrective actions to address the implementation of the recommendation, which will be accomplished related to the redesign of its Automated Fluid Minerals Support System (AFMSS). However, the agency reported that this system will not be completed until March 2020. In October 2019, we requested an update on BLM's timeframes.