GAO Reports on EPA’s Hazardous Waste Corrective Action Program

As people throughout New England are aware, years of industrial development have generated hazardous waste that, when improperly disposed of, poses risks to human health and the environment. Some years ago, Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA) in order to mitigate these risks.

Subtitle C of RCRA, as amended, requires owners or operators to take corrective actions to clean up contamination at facilities that treat, store, or dispose of hazardous waste. The corrective action program is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) or states authorized by EPA.

To focus and streamline the RCRA corrective action program, EPA has (over the past decade) set a series of progressively more ambitious performance goals and identified which facilities must meet them. Its first set of performance goals, for example (to be achieved in fiscal year 2005), were to control human exposures to contamination and migration of contaminated groundwater at 95 percent of 1,714 “high-risk” facilities. EPA also established a long-range vision for the program, going beyond controlling contamination to cleaning it up. Hence, it targeted 2020 as the year by which 95 percent of 3,747 facilities (expanded from 1,714 to include low- and medium-risk facilities) would have completed construction of all cleanup remedies. EPA also established a process for its regions and authorized states to follow in determining whether facilities undergoing cleanup have met major milestones toward controlling human exposure and preventing the spread of contaminated groundwater and issued guidance to assist in streamlining the corrective action process, maximize program flexibility, and expedite cleanup.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office was asked to assess this program, and GAO has recently released a report of its assessment. This report discusses (1) actions EPA has taken to establish goals for the program and expedite cleanup; (2) the progress EPA, states, and facilities have made in meeting these goals; and (3) the challenges EPA, states, and facilities face, if any, in meeting future cleanup goals. During the process, GAO reviewed and analyzed EPA documents and data and interviewed EPA and state agency officials and stakeholder groups.

In its report, GAO recommends that EPA assess the remaining corrective action workload, determine the extent to which the program has resources needed to meet 2020 goals, and take steps to either reallocate its resources or revise its goals. EPA agreed with the recommendation.

To access this GAO report, please visit:

GAO: Hazardous Waste:  Early Goals Have Been Met in EPA's Corrective Action Program, but Resource and Technical Challenges Will Constrain Future Progress. (July 2011)