Summary

GAO discussed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) progress in implementing Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) provisions to determine whether EPA was: (1) identifying and regulating hazardous wastes; (2) ensuring RCRA facilities' compliance with regulatory controls; and (3) encouraging waste minimization.

GAO found that: (1) EPA made limited progress in identifying and regulating hazardous wastes due to its changing approaches, inadequate resources, and absence of systematic implementation procedures; (2) Congress enacted prescriptive amendments to RCRA with numerous deadlines that imposed specific controls if EPA failed to meet them; (3) EPA completed action on less than half of the 76 specific deadlines Congress imposed, although it made some progress on the others; and (4) although EPA was developing a plan to specify waste identification tasks and identify needed resources, it had no timetable for completion or implementation. GAO also found that: (1) both private and government-owned facilities failed to comply with EPA regulations in the areas of groundwater monitoring, closure and post-closure, and financial assurance requirements; (2) although EPA developed a strategy requiring 90-percent compliance by 1989, it did not hold its regions or states accountable for meeting the goal; (3) although EPA was working to determine, by the end of 1990, the need for a mandatory waste minimization program, it had no set overall quantifiable goals for waste reduction due to its lack of data; and (4) EPA has been unable to develop comprehensive and reliable data to assess hazardous waste legislation, evaluate trends in regulatory compliance and waste minimization, and develop waste management priorities.