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Published: 1992

Total Pages: 10

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This report discusses the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to correct long- standing contract management problems in the Superfund program. Superfund, EPA's $15 billion effort to clean up the nation's most dangerous hazardous waste sites, is one of 16 federal programs that the General Accounting Office(GAO) has identified as being most vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse. The program is vulnerable in part because of its extensive use of cost-reimbursable contracts, with potential values of almost $10 billion, and its history of contract management problems. The Superfund program was created by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 to clean up the nation's most dangerous hazardous waste sites. The program has been reauthorized twice since then--first, in 1986, by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) and again in 1990. The program's cumulative authorization is $15.2 billion. The scope and cost of Superfund have greatly exceeded initial expectations. The Superfund cleanup list, which originally included 406 sites, currently contains 1,275 sites, and EPA expects the list to grow to 2,000 sites by the year 2000. While the program has had some important accomplishments, especially in alleviating emergency conditions at sites and enforcing cleanup obligations of those who contaminated the sites, cleanups have been completed at only 90 sites. Consequently, we can expect the cleanup effort at present Superfund sites alone will run well into the next century. Superfund's authorization through 1994 will not come close to paying for EPA's projected $40 billion share of cleanup costs for the currently listed sites. (KAR) P. 2/3.