EPA’s removal cleanups include (1) emergency removals for threats requiring immediate action, (2) time-critical removals for threats requiring action within 6 months, and (3) NTC removals for threats where action can be delayed for at least 6 months in order to adequately plan for cleanups. Also, using these removals could shift a portion of the cleanup costs from the states to EPA. NTC Removals Save Time and Money and Improve Environmental Protection

According to the site managers EPA surveyed, using the NTC program instead of the remedial program reduced the overall time spent on cleaning up portions of sites from about 4 years to 2 years, on average. In many cases, larger savings have been reported. NTC Removals Have Potential Disadvantages

While NTC removals demonstrate valuable benefits, they may also present some disadvantages, including the need for more staff time to monitor NTC cleanups, less ability for EPA to enforce cleanup agreements with private parties, and a potential for states to decrease their funding of a portion of the cleanup costs. Several Factors Constrain the Use of NTC Removals

Several factors have constrained the use of NTC removals, including the difficulty regions encounter in funding these actions and the current statutory limits on the time and costs that can be spent on NTC removals. Of this percentage, most must go to fund the hundreds of emergency and time-critical removals that regions conduct, leaving little for NTC removals. Proposed legislation to reauthorize Superfund, H.R. 2500 and S. 1285, would raise the limits on removals and relax the consistency requirements. Additional copies are $2 each.
Why GAO Did This Study

GAO discussed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) use of non-time-critical removals for hazardous waste cleanups, focusing on: (1) the advantages and disadvantages of non-time-critical removals; (2) the potential use of non-time-critical removals in Superfund cleanups; and (3) factors that inhibit the use of non-time-critical removals.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) on average the use of non-time-critical removals could expedite environmental cleanups by 2 years and reduce costs by about $500,000 over similar cleanup actions using the remedial removal process; (2) non-time-critical removals are successful because they have a streamlined planning process; (3) non-time-critical removals would require EPA to spend more time overseeing cleanup contracts and shift costs from states to EPA; (4) non-time-critical removals are a potentially useful tool in cleaning up portions of most of the 3,000 sites in the EPA Superfund inventory; (5) non-time-critical removals have not been used for a wide variety of cleanups because most Superfund funding has been spent on emergency removals; (6) additional factors that have limited non-time-critical removal use include EPA inability to shift funds between accounts and regions, and statutory limits on the duration and cost of non-time-critical removals; and (7) the proposed Superfund reauthorization legislation would ease the statutory limitations on non-time-critical removals.