Environmental Protection Issue Area Plan--Fiscal Years 1995-97 (Letter
Report, 06/01/96, GAO/IAP-96-24).

GAO provided information on its Environmental Protection issue area plan
for fiscal years 1995 through 1997.

GAO plans to: (1) evaluate the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA)
management and budget to help ensure that available resources are used
efficiently and effectively; (2) assess the government's management of
hazardous waste site cleanups; (3) review the implementation and
cost-effectiveness of air quality measures required by the Clean Air Act
Amendments of 1990; and (4) identify cost-effective alternatives to
protect the nation's water resources and to ensure safe drinking water
supplies.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  IAP-96-24
     TITLE:  Environmental Protection Issue Area Plan--Fiscal Years 
             1995-97
      DATE:  06/01/96
   SUBJECT:  Water quality
             Cost effectiveness analysis
             Hazardous substances
             Waste management
             Environmental monitoring
             Environmental policies
             Environmental law
             Air pollution control
             Intergovernmental relations
             Water pollution
IDENTIFIER:  Superfund Program
             
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Cover
================================================================ COVER


Resources, Community, and Economic Development Division

June 1996

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ISSUE
AREA PLAN - FISCAL YEARS 1995-97

GAO/IAP-96-24



Abbreviations
=============================================================== ABBREV

  GAO -
  EPA -
  CEQ -

FOREWORD
============================================================ Chapter 0

As the investigative arm of the Congress and the nation's auditor,
the General Accounting Office is charged with following the federal
dollar wherever it goes.  Reflecting stringent standards of
objectivity and independence, GAO's audits, evaluations, and
investigations promote a more efficient and cost-effective
government; expose waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in federal
programs; help the Congress target budget reductions; assess
financial information management; and alert the Congress to
developing trends that may have significant fiscal or budgetary
consequences.  In fulfilling its responsibilities, GAO performs
original research and uses hundreds of databases or creates its own
to compile and analyze information. 

To ensure that GAO's resources are directed toward the most important
issues facing the Congress, each of GAO's 32 issue areas develops a
strategic plan that describes its key issues and their significance,
the objectives and focus of its work, and the planned major job
starts.  Each issue area relies heavily on input from congressional
committees, agency officials, and subject-matter experts in
developing its strategic plan. 

With the nation's annual environmental compliance costs approaching
$120 billion, GAO's work in the Environmental Protection Issue Area
generally focuses on increasing the cost-effectiveness of
environmental programs.  This emphasis recognizes the continuing high
growth in these costs while unmet environmental needs remain. 
Consequently, limited public and private environmental resources need
to be used in ways that best protect human health and the
environment.  This issue area covers the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), the Council of Environmental Quality (CEQ), and other
agencies responsible for carrying out environmental laws, policies,
and programs.  The principal issues facing the Congress and the
administration in the environmental area are

ï¿½evaluating EPA's management and budget to help ensure that available
resources are used efficiently and effectively;

ï¿½assessing the government's management of hazardous waste site
cleanups, which are estimated to cost hundreds of billions of
dollars;

ï¿½reviewing the implementation and the cost-effectiveness of air
quality measures required by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990;
and

ï¿½identifying cost-effective alternatives to protect the nation's
water resources and to ensure safe drinking water supplies. 

In the pages that follow, we describe our key planned work on these
important issues during our 3-year planning period (fiscal years 1995
through 1997).  This year's update to the plan contains some slight
changes in emphasis to reflect current congressional interest and
available resources.  Also, because unanticipated events may
significantly affect even the best of plans, our planning process
allows for updating this plan during the year as needed to respond
quickly to emerging issues.  If you have any questions or suggestions
about this plan, please call me or Stanley J.  Czerwinski, Associate
Director, at (202) 512-6511. 

Peter F.  Guerrero
Director
Environmental Protection Issues


CONTENTS
============================================================ Chapter 1


   FOREWORD
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 1:1

1


   TABLE I:  KEY ISSUES
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 1:2

4


   TABLE II:  PLANNED MAJOR WORK
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 1:3

6


TABLE I:  KEY ISSUES
============================================================ Chapter 2

Issue                                         Significance                                 Objectives                                    Focus of work
--------------------------------------------  -------------------------------------------  --------------------------------------------  -------------------------------------------
Management and budget: Do EPA's approaches    Continued progress in environmental          ï¿½Identify ways for EPA and the states to      ï¿½Performance-and incentive-based
to environmental protection ensure that       protection will be costly. Increasingly,     achieve environmental results cost-           alternatives to current regulatory
resources are optimally targeted and spent?   questions are being raised about whether     effectively.                                  approaches
                                              environmental spending is targeted on the
                                              highest priority needs. This attention to    ï¿½Assess ways to enhance the efficiency and    ï¿½Potential efficiencies and cost savings in
                                              the cost-effectiveness of environmental      effectiveness of EPA's management of          EPA's budget
                                              programs is especially important with the    environmental programs.
                                              increased budgetary pressures at all levels                                                ï¿½Opportunities to improve relations between
                                              of government. Greater attention needs to    ï¿½Examine the effectiveness of EPA and state   EPA and the states
                                              be given to performance-based measures of    partnerships in reaching environmental
                                              progress coupled with more flexible,         objectives.
                                              incentive-based regulatory approaches; more
                                              effective partnerships between EPA and the
                                              states; and better management.

Hazardous and solid waste: Is the government  Under the Superfund law, hazardous waste     ï¿½Provide the Congress with information to     ï¿½Federal budget implications of completing
effectively managing waste programs and       cleanups are expected to cost billions of    aid in its reauthorization of hazardous       cleanups
ensuring that hazardous waste                 dollars and take decades. The federal        (Superfund) and solid waste legislation.
sites are cleaned up cost-effectively?        government faces the largest liability,                                                    ï¿½Federal and state responsibilities for
                                              potentially hundreds of billions of          ï¿½Examine ways to improve the efficiency,      cleanups
                                              dollars. Concerns about this program center  cost-effectiveness, and pace of cleanups as
                                              on the slow pace and high cost of cleanups   well as waste management.                     ï¿½Innovative methods and technologies to
                                              as well as inefficiencies in administering                                                 encourage waste management and cleanup,
                                              the program. With the law up for                                                           including incentives for private voluntary
                                              reauthorization, these issues are the                                                      cleanups and accelerated cleanup processes
                                              subject of much debate.

Air quality: Is the federal government        While the overall quality of our nation's    ï¿½Assist the Congress in its oversight of      ï¿½EPA's efforts to revise its air quality
implementing the Clean Air Act Amendments     air has improved, air pollution problems     EPA's implementation of the Clean Air Act     standards and to improve the accuracy of
cost-effectively and are emerging issues,     continue. In the next few years, the Clean   Amendments of 1990.                           its air quality modeling
such                                          Air Act Amendments of 1990 require EPA to
as climate change, being appropriately        establish more regulations to reduce acid    ï¿½Review how EPA ensures that it considers     ï¿½The adequacy and usefulness of cost-
addressed?                                    rain, ozone-forming emissions, and airborne  the most cost-effective control measures      benefit and other analyses that EPA uses to
                                              toxic chemicals. These new regulations are   when implementing regulations to address air  make its regulatory decisions
                                              expected to add significantly to the annual  quality problems.
                                              costs of compliance, which now exceed $25                                                  ï¿½The costs and timing of the federal
                                              billion. Concerns about these costs and      ï¿½Assess agency initiatives to address         government's role in reducing greenhouse
                                              other challenges to achieving these          emerging issues, such as climate change.      gases
                                              reductions have focused attention on the
                                              use of innovative and cost-effective
                                              approaches. In addition, the buildup of
                                              carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping
                                              gases in the earth's atmosphere has raised
                                              concerns about the greenhouse effect and
                                              global warming. The United States is the
                                              world's largest contributor to carbon
                                              dioxide emissions, and costly actions may
                                              be needed to mitigate climate changes.

Water quality: Is the government cost-        Annual costs to control water pollution are  ï¿½Identify ways to ensure that compliance      ï¿½Opportunities to improve the cost-
effectively protecting                        expected to increase significantly in the    costs bring commensurate benefits.            effectiveness of decisions to address water
surface water, groundwater, and drinking      coming years--reaching around $65 billion                                                  quality problems
water?                                        by the year 2000. Local governments and      ï¿½Provide the Congress with information to
                                              private industries will bear most of these   assist in its reauthorization of the Clean    ï¿½The progress of federal, state, and local
                                              costs. The increases are primarily           Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts.           governments in responding to the most
                                              attributable to the costs for treating                                                     significant water quality concerns
                                              wastewater and meeting new federal mandates
                                              for protecting drinking water.                                                             ï¿½Legislative options for achieving water
                                                                                                                                         quality goals cost-effectively
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TABLE II:  PLANNED MAJOR WORK
============================================================ Chapter 3

Issue               Planned Major Job Starts
------------------  --------------------------------------------------------------------
Management and      ï¿½Assess how well EPA's regulatory reform initiatives decrease
budget              reporting requirements for businesses and provide states and
                    businesses with increased flexibility to implement environmental
                    programs.
                    ï¿½Review EPA's justification for its fiscal year 1997 budget
                    request.
                    ï¿½Review the effectiveness of EPA's planning and budgeting
                    processes.
                    ï¿½Review EPA's peer review process that assesses the quality of
                    scientific data used in its regulatory decisions.

Hazardous and       ï¿½Determine if EPA has corrected previously reported deficiencies in
solid waste         recovering its costs, contracting, and setting priorities for
                    cleanups in its management of the Superfund program.
                    ï¿½Identify ways to perform more cost-effective cleanups of hazardous
                    waste sites at federal facilities.
                    ï¿½Assess priority setting for cleaning up hazardous waste sites at
                    federal facilities.
                    ï¿½Identify which states have already assumed some Superfund cleanup
                    program responsibilities and what their responsibilities are.
                    ï¿½Review how efficiently and effectively states manage cleanups of
                    Superfund hazardous waste sites.
                    ï¿½Review "best practices" in state programs that offer private
                    businesses incentives to voluntarily clean up hazardous waste sites.

Air quality         ï¿½Assess how accurately EPA's computer model predicts reductions in
                    emissions from motor vehicles.
                    ï¿½Review the quality and usefulness of cost benefit analyses to help
                    ensure the cost-effectiveness of air quality regulations.
                    ï¿½Review developed countries' progress in reducing greenhouse gas
                    emissions and identify factors affecting their progress.

Water quality       ï¿½Examine the states' needs for and spending of federal funds to
                    finance the construction of wastewater treatment facilities.
                    ï¿½Assess the progress of federal, state, and local governments in
                    responding to the most significant water quality concerns.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*** End of document. ***