Superfund: Implications of Key Reauthorization Issues (Testimony,
05/03/96, GAO/T-RCED-96-145).

GAO discussed how the proposed Accelerated Cleanup and Environmental
Restoration Act would affect the Superfund Program's reauthorization.
GAO noted that the legislation would: (1) require that cleanups comply
only with standards that pertain to hazardous waste cleanups, rather
than with water quality standards; (2) allow states to define their own
standards and permit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to waive
those standards; (3) require that EPA use site-specific data and less
conservative assumptions when assessing cleanup sites; (4) require that
cleanup sites be ranked by risk; (5) allow the expanded use of low-cost
hazardous waste containment measures at cleanup sites; (6) relax the
restrictions on non-time-critical removals, which can speed the cleanup
process; (7) provide assistance to states to establish programs through
which private parties would voluntarily clean up sites; (8) restrict the
number of additional sites that could be added to the National
Priorities List (NPL); (9) shift the financial burden of the Superfund
program from the federal government to state governments; (10) limit the
liability of responsible parties at Superfund sites, establish a
nonbinding process to distribute the cost of cleanups, and decrease
liability for natural resource damage; and (11) mandate the testing and
use of new, potentially cost-reducing technologies such as
bioremediation at cleanup sites.

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

 REPORTNUM:  T-RCED-96-145
     TITLE:  Superfund: Implications of Key Reauthorization Issues
      DATE:  05/03/96
   SUBJECT:  Proposed legislation
             Hazardous substances
             Safety standards
             Environmental policies
             Biological research
             Waste management
             Cost control
             Intergovernmental fiscal relations
             Liability (legal)
             Federal/state relations
IDENTIFIER:  Superfund Accelerated Cleanup Model
             Superfund Program
             Superfund Trust Fund
             EPA National Priorities List
             
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Cover
================================================================ COVER


Before the Committee on
Environment and Public Works
U.S.  Senate

Hearing Held at 10 a.m.  EDT
April 24, 1996
Statement Submitted
May 1, 1996

SUPERFUND - IMPLICATIONS OF KEY
REAUTHORIZATION ISSUES

Statement for the Record by
Peter F.  Guerrero,
Director, Environmental Protection Issues,
Resources, Community, and Economic
Development Division

GAO/T-RCED-96-145

GAO/RCED-96-145T


(160336)


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

  EPA -
  CERCLA -
  NPL -
  RCED -
  GAO -

============================================================ Chapter 0

Mr.  Chairman and Members of the Committee: 

We are pleased to present our views, as requested, on the Accelerated
Cleanup and Environmental Restoration Act of 1996 (S.  1285), which
would reauthorize and significantly change the Superfund program. 
Under the current Superfund law, relatively few of the nation's worst
hazardous waste sites have been completely cleaned up.  Moreover, the
estimated costs of the cleanups have risen at a time when the
government's resources are limited.  The Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) has initiated a number of administrative reforms to
improve the program's effectiveness, but more fundamental legislative
reforms are needed. 

Our views on some of the proposed bill's potential implications for
the Superfund program are based on our recent work assessing how well
EPA and other federal agencies are implementing the current program. 
We will comment on six major changes that S.  1285 would make to that
program.  Specifically, it would (1) increase the role of risk in
decisions about whether and how to clean up waste sites, (2) expand
the range of alternatives available to address wastes at sites, (3)
transfer some of the federal government's authority for cleanups to
the states, (4) reduce legal costs, (5) limit claims for damages to
natural resources caused by contamination, and (6) foster the wider
use of cost-effective technologies for cleaning up federal
facilities. 

In summary, our primary observations are as follows: 

  -- Several provisions in S.  1285 would elevate the role of risk
     and site-specific risk assessments in deciding whether and how
     extensively to clean up a site.  Over the past few years, we
     have endorsed the use of risk to manage cleanups and the
     Superfund program.  We have reported that basing cleanup
     decisions on environmental standards and generic assumptions
     rather than actual data about how sites will be used in the
     future can lead to more extensive cleanups than the risks at
     sites would warrant.  We have also reported that using risk as a
     criterion for setting cleanup priorities would help to ensure
     that the sites posing the greatest risks to human health or the
     environment would be addressed first. 

  -- To help cut cleanup costs, S.  1285 would eliminate the
     preference in the current Superfund law for remedies that
     permanently treat contamination at sites.  As a result, less
     costly remedies, such as erecting fences around contaminated
     soil to prevent human contact, could be implemented.  We found
     that these remedies may require substantial spending on
     longer-term operations, maintenance, and monitoring to ensure
     that they remain protective of human health.  The bill would
     also raise the dollar and time limits for using certain removal
     actions, thereby giving EPA more flexibility to use such
     actions, which we have reported can save time and money and more
     quickly address health and environmental risks. 

  -- Several provisions in S.  1285 would increase the responsibility
     of the states in cleanups.  For example, S.  1285 would provide
     assistance for the states to establish and expand programs that
     encourage private parties to voluntarily clean up sites,
     including abandoned urban sites known as brownfields.  Our work
     shows that this assistance would help to allay the concerns of
     private parties about their liability and costs for cleaning up
     sites.  The bill would also delegate some of EPA's cleanup
     responsibilities to qualified states.  Our recent work shows
     that some states were concerned about the financial resources
     they would have available to conduct additional cleanups at
     seriously contaminated sites. 

  -- Last year, we reported that the legal expenses for parties to
     resolve their liability for contamination at a site and to
     allocate the cleanup costs among all the parties involved can be
     a substantial portion of their overall cleanup costs.  For
     example, we found that legal expenses constituted an average of
     one-third of the total Superfund expenses for large corporate
     parties.  The bill would seek to limit these expenses by
     establishing a nonbinding allocation process to determine each
     party's portion of the site's cleanup costs. 

  -- The bill would also limit parties' liability for natural
     resource damages at hazardous waste sites.  Our work has shown
     that in the past, natural resource damages have been assessed at
     only a small percentage of the Superfund sites.  The number of
     future claims most likely will also be limited, although some of
     these claims could be quite large.  We believe the bill's
     natural resource damage provisions are likely to affect a
     relatively small number of parties that could have been exposed
     to major damage claims. 

  -- The bill would authorize the wider use of innovative
     technologies at federal facilities, such as bioremediation,
     which uses microorganisms to ingest certain contaminants in
     soil.  Our work and the work of others has shown that while this
     approach could reduce cleanup costs, such technologies have not
     been widely used at these sites. 


   BACKGROUND
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:1

When the Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response and
Compensation Act (CERCLA), commonly known as the Superfund law, in
1980, it established a trust fund (Superfund), financed primarily by
taxes on crude oil and certain chemicals, for cleaning up highly
contaminated hazardous waste sites.  It also required EPA to develop
a list of priorities for cleaning up the most hazardous waste sites,
called the National Priorities List (NPL).  In 1986, the Congress
reauthorized Superfund and required EPA to meet certain cleanup
schedules and to give preference to methods that permanently
decontaminate sites.  In 1990, the Congress again reauthorized
Superfund, adding $5.1 billion to the program.  In total, $15.2
billion has been authorized for the program. 

As of September 30, 1995, EPA had listed or proposed to list about
1,290 sites on the NPL, completed construction at about 304 sites,
and deleted 84 sites from the list.  The agency estimates that the
average cost of cleaning up an NPL site, to the federal government or
responsible parties, is $26 million. 

The Senate bill contains numerous provisions designed to address
cleanup costs.  We would now like to discuss some of the implications
of the bill's provisions. 


   RISK ASSESSMENTS CAN PROVIDE
   FOR CLEANUPS THAT ARE BETTER
   TAILORED TO CONDITIONS AT SITES
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2

Several provisions in S.  1285 would elevate the role of risk and
site-specific risk assessments in decisions about whether and how
extensively a site should be cleaned up.  We have reported that
basing these decisions on environmental standards and generic
assumptions about such things as the projected future use of a site,
rather than actual data from the site, can lead to extensive and
costly cleanups.  EPA has recently introduced reforms to resolve some
of these issues, but S.  1285 would take more extensive measures. 


      ALTERING THE USE OF
      ENVIRONMENTAL STANDARDS AS
      THE BASIS FOR CLEANUPS COULD
      CHANGE THE EXTENT OF SOME
      ACTIONS
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2.1

One criticism of the current Superfund law is that it has resulted in
some cleanups that were more extensive and costlier than were
warranted by the health risks at sites.  Such results may occur, in
part, because the 1986 Superfund amendments require that cleanups
comply with all "applicable" or "relevant and appropriate" standards
set in other federal and state environmental laws, including certain
standards set under the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water
Act where relevant and appropriate.  The Senate bill would require
compliance only with "applicable" standards, that is, with those that
directly pertain to hazardous waste cleanups, and it would eliminate
the reference to the specific acts.  The bill would also provide
opportunities for the states to define their own applicable
standards.  The proposed legislation would allow EPA to waive the
standards if reaching them, among other things, is technically
infeasible or unreasonably costly. 

The extent to which this change affects cleanups will depend, in
large part, on whether states establish their own cleanup standards
and whether these standards differ significantly from those that have
been used at cleanups to date.  In a recent survey of states, we
found that 21 of the 33 states we contacted had already set standards
for groundwater or soil cleanups, or for both types, that specify
numeric limits on acceptable concentrations of chemicals.\1
Additionally, some states have general policies about cleanup, such
as requirements that chemicals be limited to the levels that occur
naturally in the immediate environment.  For groundwater, 20 of the
states had set numeric standards that were similar to the federal
drinking water standards, although most of these states had set more
stringent standards for a few chemicals.  For soil, which has few
federal standards, 13 of the 20 states had set their own cleanup
standards.  We did find, however, that the states were flexible in
allowing exceptions to the cleanup levels required under the
standards in order to account for conditions making it difficult or
unnecessary to reach the standards. 

In states that have not established their own standards,
site-specific risk assessments would play a more important role in
determining the extent of Superfund cleanups.  When we reviewed EPA's
data for 225 Superfund sites, we found that having used risk
assessments instead of standards to determine the need for cleanups
would not significantly have changed the number of sites cleaned up\2
but would sometimes have changed the extent of the cleanups.  To
comply with the law, EPA had used federal and state standards rather
than risk assessments to determine the extent of the cleanups at
about three-fourths of the 139 sites in the database for which
information on the basis for cleanup was available.  If EPA had
relied more on risk assessments, as S.  1285 would require, some of
these cleanups might have been less extensive--and less expensive. 
This is because, as EPA program officials acknowledged, standards
tend to require more stringent cleanups than risk assessments. 


--------------------
\1 For information on the use of state standards for Superfund
cleanups, see Superfund:  How States Establish and Apply
Environmental Standards When Cleaning Up Sites (GAO/RCED-96-70FS,
Mar.  20, 1996), and State Cleanup Standards (GAO/RCED-96-98R, Apr. 
24, 1996). 

\2 Superfund:  EPA's Use of Risk Assessments in Cleanup Decisions
(GAO/T-RCED-95-231, June 22, 1995). 


      RISK ANALYSES WOULD BE BASED
      MORE ON SITE DATA THAN ON
      GENERIC ASSUMPTIONS
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2.2

Using risk assessments to determine cleanup levels without changing
the risk assessment process itself could still result in more
extensive cleanups than might be warranted at some sites.  When EPA
lacks specific data about a site, it makes assumptions in its
estimates of risk about both the quantity of contaminants that will
reach people and the toxicity of these contaminants.  EPA tends to
make relatively conservative assumptions, justifying this tendency on
the basis that it has a mandate from the Congress to protect all
individuals around Superfund sites.  Critics argue that these
assumptions are not realistic for all sites. 

The Senate proposal calls for the use of site-specific data and
"realistic and plausible" assumptions about the risks posed by
contaminants.  For example, the bill calls for considering data about
a site when deciding how the land at a site may be used in the
future.  Determining a site's future use is key to estimating
people's future exposure to contaminants at the site, which, in turn,
helps to determine the level of cleanup required for the site.  We
found that when EPA lacked specific data on a site's future use, it
adopted the assumptions that would be the most protective of human
health, namely, that the land would be used for residential rather
than commercial or industrial purposes.\3 Assuming future residential
use can lead to estimates of health risks that warrant cleaning up a
site immediately.  In reviewing EPA's data for 225 Superfund sites,
we found that at about half of the 190 sites where EPA had decided
cleanup was necessary, the health risks were ranked as high not
because of the land's current use but because EPA had assumed the
land's use would change in the future.\4

EPA recognizes that this assumption leads to costlier cleanups, and
last year the agency decided to use more site-specific data when
deciding what assumptions to make about a site's future uses.  The
proposed legislation would go farther to incorporate the assumptions
about future land use in cleanup decisions. 


--------------------
\3 Superfund:  Improved Reviews and Guidance Could Reduce
Inconsistencies in Risk Assessments (GAO/RCED-94-220, Aug.  10,
1994). 

\4 Superfund:  Information on Current Health Risks (GAO/RCED-95-205,
July 19, 1995). 


      INCORPORATING RISK IN
      SETTING CLEANUP PRIORITIES
      WOULD HELP ACHIEVE THE MOST
      PROTECTION
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:2.3

Given that both the government and private industry have spent
billions of dollars to date on the Superfund program but significant
numbers of sites remain to be cleaned up, it is important to achieve
the maximum amount of environmental protection from the available
federal resources.  We reported in 1994 that although EPA had adopted
a policy of addressing the worst sites first, its regional offices
had set priorities using such factors as the amount of work needed to
evaluate a site instead of considering the site's health and
environmental risks.\5 Recently, in response to expected budget
reductions, EPA convened a panel to help rank NPL sites nationwide on
the basis of risk and other factors.  In the past, EPA has taken
similar actions when resources have been limited, but its efforts
have been short-term. 

We have also reported that national risk-based priority-setting
systems have not been fully implemented at the Departments of Defense
and Energy.\6 Of the hundreds of federally owned hazardous waste
sites, only eight have been cleaned up so far.  Although most of the
work remains to be done, agencies' budgets for the federal cleanup
and compliance effort, whose costs may ultimately total $400 billion,
have been declining.  By basing cleanup priorities largely on the
relative risks of sites, agencies could ensure that funds are
effectively allocated. 


--------------------
\5 Relative Risk in Superfund (GAO/RCED-94-233R, June 17, 1994), and
Superfund:  Reauthorization and Risk Prioritization Issues
(GAO/T-RCED-94-250, June 24, 1994). 

\6 Department of Energy:  National Priorities Needed for Meeting
Environmental Agreements (GAO/RCED-95-1, Mar.  3, 1995) and
Environmental Cleanup:  Too Many High Priority Sites Impede DOD's
Program (GAO/NSIAD-94-133, Apr.  21, 1994). 


   CHANGES IN THE CLEANUP METHODS
   SELECTED WILL AFFECT COSTS
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3

Both the Congress and EPA are concerned about the high costs of
cleanups and are trying to curb these costs.  The current law's
requirements that cleanup remedies comply with federal and state
environmental standards and permanently treat waste have limited the
alternatives available to cut costs.  EPA now plans to review any
remedies that exceed certain cost thresholds to determine whether
lower-cost alternatives are available.  The agency is also evaluating
the results of a 1992 initiative that uses EPA's emergency response,
or removal, authority to clean up portions of sites more quickly and
at less cost.  The Senate bill would also address costs by
eliminating the preference for permanent treatments of waste, thereby
allowing for greater consideration of remedies that rely on the
containment of waste than exists under current law.  The bill would
also increase the current law's dollar and time limits on federally
funded removals.  These changes would facilitate EPA's use, where
appropriate, of removal actions, which are faster and less costly
than EPA's traditional cleanup processes. 


      NEW PROVISIONS ALLOW FOR
      LESS COSTLY CLEANUPS
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3.1

After the 1986 amendments to CERCLA established a preference for
permanently treating wastes, EPA increasingly selected permanent
measures, such as incinerating contaminated soil, rather than
containment measures, such as fencing it off from human contact. 
This preference, in turn, increased shorter-term cleanup costs
because constructing treatment technologies is more expensive than
installing containment measures.  Currently, about half of all
cleanup plans include permanent treatments.  The bill would eliminate
the preference for permanence, thereby allowing the expanded use of
containment options.  Such options include implementing lower-cost
engineering controls (like waterproof covers to contain rather than
clean up waste) and institutional controls (like land-use
restrictions), as long as they protect human health and the
environment. 

However, while the costs to implement these remedies might be lower,
they would require long-term monitoring and maintenance to ensure
that they remain protective.  We estimate that the average cost of
operating and maintaining a site with contained waste could be $5
million over 30 years.  We also estimate that during this period,
overall operation and maintenance costs to the federal government,
states, and responsible parties could be $5 billion, $8 billion, and
$18 billion, respectively.  We recently reported EPA had identified
several sites where alternatives to treatment had been used and
problems had developed, requiring additional work.\7


--------------------
\7 Superfund:  Operations and Maintenance Activities Will Require
Billions of Dollars (GAO/RCED-95-259, Sept.  29, 1995). 


      RELAXING THE LEGAL LIMITS ON
      FEDERALLY FUNDED REMOVALS
      WOULD MAKE IT EASIER FOR EPA
      TO USE THEM AT MORE SITES
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:3.2

In response to criticism that cleanups were costing too much and
taking too long, EPA implemented its Superfund Accelerated Cleanup
Model in 1992.  One of the model's initiatives was for EPA to expand
its use of non-time-critical removals--actions the agency typically
uses to clean up portions of sites requiring urgent, but not
emergency, treatment.  These non-time-critical removals result in
quicker cleanups than actions taken under EPA's traditional remedial
program because they streamline the steps used to study a site's
contamination and design a cleanup method.  The Senate bill would
raise the current law's dollar and time limits on federally funded
removal actions. 

We recently reported that EPA could potentially use these removals at
portions of the 1,000 sites currently awaiting cleanup on the NPL, as
well as at portions of the estimated 2,000 additional sites that
could be listed.\8 Typically, for these portions, EPA is more certain
of the types of contamination present and the appropriate methods to
address it, and the agency does not need to conduct extensive studies
and designs before taking action.  EPA site managers estimate that
the non-time-critical removals conducted to date have reduced cleanup
time--from 4 years to 2 years, on average--and saved money--cutting
$500,000 from an average total cleanup cost of $4.1 million per site. 
By addressing contamination sooner, these actions also can reduce
risks to public health and prevent contamination from spreading
farther in the environment.  However, the current legal time and
dollar limits on these actions constrain the use of these removals at
federally funded sites.  Raising the limits from 12 months to 24
months and from $2 million to $4 million, as S.  1285 provides, would
allow EPA to use these removals more easily at portions of many
Superfund sites. 


--------------------
\8 A Superfund Tool for More Efficient Cleanups (GAO/RCED-96-134R,
Apr.  15, 1996) and Superfund:  Non-Time-Critical Removals as a Tool
for Faster and Less Costly Cleanups (GAO/T-RCED-96-137, Apr.  17,
1996). 


   STATES WOULD TAKE ON MORE
   CLEANUP RESPONSIBILITIES, AND
   THEIR COSTS COULD CHANGE
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:4

Although EPA has assessed and cleaned up some NPL sites, thousands of
other sites need to be addressed.  The bill would authorize EPA to
delegate some of its responsibilities for cleanups at NPL sites to
qualified states. 


      THE BILL SUPPORTS STATE
      CLEANUP INNOVATIONS
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:4.1

To promote faster and less costly cleanups, the bill would provide
financial and technical assistance to states to set up programs
through which private parties would voluntarily clean up sites under
a state's supervision.  At this Committee's request, we are currently
reviewing several programs from among the 31 states with such
programs to identify their best practices, including streamlining
cleanups, creating financial incentives for redevelopment, and
protecting property owners from further liability for contamination. 

In other work for this Committee, we are addressing the redevelopment
of abandoned or underutilized contaminated urban properties, known as
brownfields.  Our work shows that the bill--in limiting the liability
of lenders, property owners, and prospective purchasers--would help
to remove barriers to the properties' redevelopment.  In addition,
the loans that would be provided under the bill to municipalities
would cover the up-front costs at most brownfield sites of assessing
the sites for contamination and cleaning them up.  These measures
would help reduce the uncertainty that currently makes these sites
unattractive to developers. 


      THE BILL SHIFTS COSTS
      BETWEEN THE FEDERAL AND
      STATE GOVERNMENTS
-------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:4.2

Whether states have sufficient resources to implement the Superfund
program is an issue in transferring the federal government's
responsibility for the program to them.  For example, one provision
in the bill would allow only 125 more sites to be added to the NPL. 
Our recent work shows that under this limit, the states could acquire
responsibility for the 1,400 to 2,300 potential NPL sites whose
cleanups could otherwise have been funded out of the Superfund trust
fund, at a potential cost of $8 billion to $20 billion.\9 Seven of
the eight states whose programs we studied were concerned about their
financial ability to manage these additional cleanups, given their
current level of funding for environmental restoration.  The
additional cleanup costs they could face under a capped NPL would
depend on whether and how quickly they decided to address the
additional sites. 


--------------------
\9 Impact on States of Capping Superfund Sites (GAO/RCED-96-106R,
Mar.  18, 1996). 


   THE BILL WOULD RELIEVE
   RESPONSIBLE PARTIES OF SOME
   LEGAL EXPENSES
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:5

We have previously reported that parties involved at Superfund sites
incur high legal expenses to resolve their liability for
contamination and allocate cleanup expenses among one another.  The
Senate bill would change the current liability rules and establish a
nonbinding process to allocate costs at some sites.  Our work in this
area has documented the extent and causes of responsible parties'
legal expenses. 

Our 1994 survey of the Superfund legal expenses of Fortune 500
Industrial and Service corporations\10 showed that about half of the
respondents had been involved at Superfund sites and had spent a
median of $1.5 million at each site.  One-third of their Superfund
costs were legal expenses, incurred primarily in allocating the
responsibility for cleanup costs among the responsible parties.  For
de minimis parties, that is, those responsible for minor
contamination at a site, legal expenses constituted almost half of
the total Superfund costs.\11

The corporations attributed their high legal expenses to EPA's not
identifying all responsible parties or taking action against all
parties that had been identified.  When parties identified by EPA
believe that others are also responsible but have not been pursued by
EPA, they will often sue these other parties themselves for a
contribution to the cleanup costs.  The defendants in these
contribution suits are sometimes responsible for only small amounts
of waste at sites.  Seventy-one percent of the respondents to our
survey said that they were parties to these contribution suits. 

Provisions in S.  1285 would address these issues.  The bill's
allocation process would allow parties to submit information to EPA
about others they believe should share in the costs.  De minimis
parties, defined as those who contributed relatively small amounts of
hazardous waste at a site, would be exempt from liability.  In
addition, certain civic or charitable organizations would have
limited liability.  Under the bill's allocation process, the
government would cover the costs attributed to parties that cannot
pay or are exempt from liability, as well as other costs. 


--------------------
\10 Superfund:  Legal Expenses for Cleanup-Related Activities of
Major U.S.  Corporations (GAO/RCED-95-46, Dec.  23, 1994). 

\11 In Superfund:  Number of Potentially Responsible Parties at
Superfund Sites Is Difficult to Determine (GAO/RCED-96-75, Mar.  27,
1996), we reported that there were a minimum of 8,500 to 25,000 de
minimus parties at 175 Superfund sites. 


   SOME FUTURE NATURAL RESOURCE
   DAMAGE CLAIMS COULD BE
   SUBSTANTIAL
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:6

In addition to their cleanup obligations, responsible parties are
liable for damages to natural resources caused by contamination.  The
bill would limit natural resource damage claims under CERCLA.  At
this Committee's request, we have determined the amount of past
federal damage settlements and estimated the potential for future
federal claims.\12

We reported that settlements to date and estimated future claims have
been or are likely to be limited to a relatively small number of
sites.  However, some future claims could be large.  Through April
1995, the Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, the principal federal agencies with
trustee responsibility for natural resources, together had reached 98
settlements, about half of which involved cash payments to these
agencies by responsible parties totaling $106 million.  The median
amount of the settlements requiring payment was $200,000--a small
figure compared with the current average cost to clean up a site of
about $26 million.  Eleven settlements required payments of over $1
million. 

Officials from the two agencies estimate that the claims for up to 20
of their pending and future cases may eventually exceed $50 million
each and that the claims for up to another 40 cases may range between
$5 million and $50 million each.  According to Department of Justice
officials involved in these claims, the number of future cases is
likely to be limited by a shortage of enforcement resources and the
difficulty of establishing responsibility for damages. 


--------------------
\12 Superfund:  Natural Resource Damage Claims (GAO/T-RCED-95-182,
May 11, 1995) and Superfund:  Outlook for and Experience With Natural
Resource Damage Settlements (GAO/RCED-96-71, Apr.  16, 1996). 


   MORE COST-EFFECTIVE
   TECHNOLOGIES ARE NEEDED
---------------------------------------------------------- Chapter 0:7

The Senate bill would authorize the use of new, potentially
cost-reducing technologies at certain federally owned hazardous waste
sites.  The bill would authorize the President to designate specific
federal facilities as sites for testing innovative technologies and
authorize the EPA Administrator to approve their use at these sites. 
Our reports have shown that although EPA and the Departments of
Defense and Energy have spent substantial sums to develop waste
cleanup technologies, few such technologies have been used in
cleanups.  Even when a new technology has been successfully
demonstrated, we found, agencies are often reluctant to try it
because of its unfamiliarity or other reasons.\13 This new authority
may help to overcome the resistance we found to these technologies. 

--------------------
\13 Superfund:  EPA Needs to Better Focus Cleanup Technology
Development (GAO/T-RCED-92-92, Apr.  28, 1993), Environmental
Protection:  Challenges in Defense Environmental Program Management
(GAO/T-NSIAD-95-121, Mar.  24, 1995), and Department of Energy: 
Management Changes Needed to Expand Use of Innovative Cleanup
Technologies (GAO/RCED-94-205, Aug.  10, 1994). 


*** End of document. ***