According to EPA, this increase is due largely to the backlog of sites referred to the agency for evaluation, additional processing requirements, and a reduction in the number of sites added annually to Superfund. No nonfederal sites were listed on the NPL in fiscal  years 1988 and 1992. In 1996, EPA took an average of 9.4 years to list nonfederal sites and, in 1995, 8.3 years to list federal sites. SARA’s goal was for EPA to evaluate nonfederal sites for listing, when warranted, within 4 years of their discovery. EPA made decisions about listing nonfederal sites within 4 years of their discovery for 43 percent of the 8,931 sites discovered from fiscal year 1987 through fiscal year 1991. According to EPA officials, decisions not to list sites are now being made faster than during the period from 1987 through 1991, when many listing decisions were delayed pending a revision of the standards for evaluating hazardous waste sites. In 1996, cleanup completions averaged 10.6 years for nonfederal operable units and 6.6 years for federal operable units. For fiscal year 1993, however, EPA set an expectation for its regions to complete a cleanup within 5 years of a site’s listing. At nonfederal sites listed from 1986 through 1990, 10 percent of the operable units were cleaned up within 5 years of their site’s listing. EPA officials attributed this decrease to EPA’s effort to reduce the time for completing preliminary assessments following the passage of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA). In 1996, inspections took 6.5 years to complete, on average, from the time of site discovery. These numbers suggest that a substantial portion of the time between discovery and listing elapses while a site is awaiting the next step in the process. Time Taken to Accomplish the Principal Steps in the Process of Cleaning Up Sites

In addition to measuring the total time taken from the placement of a site on the NPL to the completion of its cleanup, we examined the time taken to complete two of the principal intermediate steps—the preparation of the record of decision, which documents the final remedy selected after completing the remedial investigation and feasibility study (RI/FS), and the remedial design, which includes the technical drawings and specifications for the selected remedy. The average time taken to select a remedy at federal sites has also increased over the years, from an average of 2 years in 1990 to an average of 6.3 years in 1996. He specifically asked that we examine trends in the time taken to (1) evaluate hazardous waste sites for possible placement on the NPL and (2) clean up the sites following their listing. For this part of the analysis, we examined data for three principal stages of the cleanup process: (1) from the site’s placement on the NPL to the selection of a remedy, (2) from the site’s listing to the completion of the remedial design, and (3) from the site’s listing to the completion of the cleanup. 4. 5. 7. 8. 9. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
Why GAO Did This Study

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Superfund cleanup efforts, focusing on trends in the time taken to: (1) evaluate and process hazardous waste sites for possible placement on the National Priorities List (NPL); and (2) clean up these sites following their listing.

What GAO Found

GAO noted that: (1) EPA took an average of 9.4 years, calculated from the date of each site's discovery, to evaluate and process the nonfederal sites it added to the NPL in 1996; (2) while this evaluation and processing time shows some improvement over 1995, when listing took an average of 11.4 years after discovery for nonfederal sites, it is generally longer than for prior years; (3) the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) requires EPA to evaluate nonfederal sites for listing, when warranted, within 4 years of their discovery; (4) listing decisions were made within 4 years of discovery for 43 percent of the 8,931 nonfederal sites discovered from 1987 through 1991; (5) the average time between discovery and listing for federal sites has also increased over the years, rising from about 6.5 years for sites listed in 1990 to 8.3 years for sites listed in 1995; (6) much of the increase in the time taken to list both federal and nonfederal sites has occurred in the latter stages of the evaluation process, after sites have been inspected and before final decisions about the need to list them are made; (7) EPA officials attributed the increases to a number of factors, including the large numbers of sites initially referred to the agency for evaluation and EPA's emphasis on completing work on already listed sites; (8) long waits for listing may continue because a large number of sites are potentially eligible for Superfund and a limited number of sites are being added to the program each year; (9) nonfederal cleanup projects completed from 1986 through 1989 were finished, on average, 3.9 years after sites were placed on the NPL; (10) by 1996, however, nonfederal cleanup completions were averaging 10.6 years; (11) SARA did not set deadlines for completing cleanups within a certain number of years, but EPA set an expectation for 1993 for its regions to complete a cleanup within 5 years of a site's listing; (12) ten percent of the cleanup projects at nonfederal sites listed from 1986 through 1990 were finished within 5 years of a site's listing; (13) federal agencies took, on average, 6.6 years from the date of listing to finish the cleanup projects they completed in fiscal year 1996; (14) much of the time taken to complete cleanups is spent during the early planning phases of the cleanup process, when cleanup remedies are selected; (15) less time has been spent on actual construction work at sites than on the selection of remedies; and (16) EPA officials attributed the increases in the time taken to complete cleanups to the growing complexity of the cleanup problems at sites.