Summary

This testimony discusses the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) contracts and assistance agreements that are used to accomplish the work of the Superfund program. GAO discusses (1) the total amount of unspent obligated funds remaining on completed contract work orders and on assistance agreements and the EPA offices and regions primarily responsible for administering those funds and (2) the timeliness of EPA's recovery of such funds. GAO concludes that the recovery of substantial unspent money on completed Superfund contract work orders and assistance agreements could be used to help EPA clean up hazardous waste sites. Although the agency has taken steps to recover such funds, it has yet to eliminate a substantial backlog of completed work orders and assistance agreements while keeping pace with annual additions to the backlog. Consequently, EPA is not recovering these funds in a timely fashion, as required by agency policy and federal contracting regulations.

GAO noted that: (1) as of December 1996, about $249 million in unspent obligated funds was potentially available to be recovered on over 6,000 completed work orders and assistance agreements; (2) EPA's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response and its regional offices located in Atlanta, New York, and Philadelphia administer most of the funds; (3) in the early 1990s, EPA recognized the need to take more timely action to recover unspent funds; (4) however, according to the agency's Inspector General, EPA's offices responsible for managing contracts and assistance agreements were not provided sufficient resources to do so, while carrying out their other responsibilities; (5) consequently, in 1994, EPA created the Superfund Deobligation Task Force to respond to a growing backlog of completed work orders and assistance agreements, and the associated unspent funds; (6) since fiscal year 1994, the task force has recovered over $400 million; and (7) however, the task force is not keeping up with a growing backlog of completed work orders and assistance agreements because it is composed of part-time members who perform these activities only when their primary job responsibilities enable them to do so.