NEWS RELEASE
CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Washington, D.C. - Representatives John D. Dingell, Ranking Member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Hilda L. Solis, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, yesterday released a General Accounting Office (GAO) report on the Department of Defense's (DOD) failure to provide reliable cleanup cost estimates and its failure to sample and clean up munitions constituents on the more than 24 million acres of operational ranges in the United States. The report also states that DOD has neglected to clean up known perchlorate contamination.

"The Department of Defense has no idea what contamination is present on their operational ranges and has no intention of finding out," Dingell said. "For DOD, ignorance is bliss until another Camp Lejeune tragedy forces a base to shut down more contaminated wells. Our military families deserve a Defense Department that protects drinking water supplies, not a Defense Department that protects its sorry record."

"This report lends further support to Congress's refusal to weaken public health and environmental standards for air and water for military activities," said Solis. "It is irresponsible that the military has chosen not to take steps to monitor for and reduce perchlorate contamination. The Defense Department must be a good steward where public health is at risk."

For decades, DOD has been testing and firing munitions on millions of acres of land across the United States. These munitions contain chemicals such as lead, TNT, perchlorate, RDX, HMX, and White Phosphorus which can be extremely dangerous to the public health if leaked into drinking water supplies. In light of concerns about the cleanup costs and health effects associated with the environmental contamination caused by these munitions, Congress required DOD, in the FY 2002 National Defense Authorization Act, to provide a comprehensive assessment of munitions constituents on operational ranges, including where the chemicals were located and how much it would cost to clean up the contamination. The GAO report released today is an analysis of DOD's progress.

The GAO concluded that the reliability of DOD's inventory is questionable at best and the Department's cost estimates are unreliable. Further, GAO discovered that no corrective actions have been taken by the DOD specifically directed at cleaning up the large number of military facilities contaminated with perchlorate nationwide. The GAO recommends that the DOD "revise its cost estimates of operational ranges using a consistent methodology and provide funding for sampling where perchlorate is suspected to occur."

Among the GAO findings are:

• "DOD does not have a comprehensive policy requiring sampling or cleanup on operational ranges for the more than 200 chemicals associated with military munitions" (p. 24).

• "... DOD generally has not independently taken actions specifically directed at cleaning up munitions contaminants such as perchlorate, on operational ranges which they have been detected" (p. 1).

• "DOD installations have conducted little or no sampling for perchlorate under DOD's perchlorate policy, and DOD has not provided specific funding to the services to conduct the sampling that is required by its policy" (p. 31).

• "In April 2003, DOD reported its estimate for the total cost to address the potential liability associated with exploded ordinance, discarded military munitions, and munitions constituents at operational ranges to be between $16 billion and $165 billion" (p. 10).

• "DOD's cost estimates to clean-up operational ranges also are questionable because the estimates were based on this inventory data, as well as on a mix of cost assumptions that were not validated -- where DOD did not establish a reasonable and defensible basis for the assumptions used -- and the computer-generated cost rates that varied across the services" (p. 4).

• "Because of DOD's approach to how it inventoried its operational ranges for munitions and how it estimated the costs to clean up those ranges, both the inventory and the cost estimates are questionable" (p. 31).

• "None of the more than 200 chemical contaminants associated with munitions use are currently regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act" (p. 12).

• "When exposed to some of these constituents humans potentially face long-term health problems, such as cancer and damage to the heart, liver, and kidneys" (p. 36).
  

For a complete copy of the GAO report go to http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04601.pdf