STATEMENT OF NIKKI L. TINSLEY
INSPECTOR GENERAL
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SUPERFUND, TOXICS,
RISK, AND WASTE MANAGEMENT, SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS
JULY 31, 2002
Good
morning, Chairman Boxer and Members of the Subcommittee. I am Nikki Tinsley, Inspector General of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). I am pleased
to speak to you today about the Office of Inspector General=s report on funding needs to clean-up non-Federal
National Priority List (NPL) Superfund sites and discuss how my Office went
about conducting our work.
On
April 17, 2002, the OIG received a letter from Congressmen John D. Dingell and
Frank Pallone, Jr., of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, requesting
OIG assistance in identifying the funding needs of each non-federal Superfund
NPL site. In the letter, the
Congressmen expressed their concerns that EPA was falling short of its cleanup
goals in fiscal year 2002 and was reducing their target further for fiscal year
2003. Accordingly, the Congressmen
requested that the OIG:
1)
Identify and
summarize the funding needed for each non-Federal Superfund NPL site so that
clean-up activities could be initiated, continued, or expedited; and
2)
Provide the
remedial action prioritization list for each region and any similar nationwide
document.
They
asked us to provide a response in a very short time-frame and, in light of this
time-frame, we did not conduct the type of detailed analysis and verification
that we would generally do in a typical audit or evaluation.
In
describing the results of our review, it is important to keep in mind that
these figures are accurate as of the date the OIG completed its fieldwork. If the same information were requested
today, some of the figures could be different because EPA Headquarters provides
funds to the regions on a quarterly basis.
Additionally, EPA periodically de-obligates funds from some sites and
uses them to fund cleanup activities at other sites. So, in essence, the report represents a snapshot in time.
I
have attached the OIG=s complete report
to this written testimony so I won=t
go into great detail on the specifics of the review. In summary, we found that for Fiscal Year 2002, EPA regions
requested $450 million for remedial actions and EPA Headquarters allocated $224
million. Also, for Fiscal Year 2002,
the regions requested $46.7 million for long-term response actions, and
received $33.2 million
In
responding to the first request, the OIG obtained information on remedial
actions and long-term response actions from EPA Headquarters and each regional
office. We developed a series of
questions which we asked Superfund officials in each of EPA=s ten regions.
The questions were designed to obtain information about the processes
for requesting and allocating funding; the officials= perspectives and/or concerns regarding these
processes; and the officials= views on the
impact of not receiving requested funds.
We obtained information on the amount requested by the region and the
amount allocated by Headquarters for each non-Federal Superfund site on the
NPL.
We
then compared the information from the regions to information EPA Regions had
previously reported to the
Congress. Prior to finalizing our
information on funds requested and allocated to specific sites, we sent the
data back to EPA regional officials for verification. Finally, senior auditors who had not worked on this assignment,
traced the amounts requested and allocated back to the source documents
provided by EPA.
In
responding to the request for regional and national remedial action
prioritization lists, we found that EPA regions provide a listing of sites to
EPA Headquarters and the National Risk Based Priority Panel develops the
prioritized list. EPA considers this
prioritized list to be Aenforcement confidential,@ meaning that if the document were to be released it
could potentially jeopardize enforcement negotiations. EPA also maintained that this document
should be withheld under guidance provided by the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act. In compliance with the Department of
Justice, we did not provide this document in our response.
As
our report indicated, EPA regional offices did not receive the full amount of
funding requested to conduct remedial actions.
When sites are ready for cleanup and the funding estimated are accurate,
not providing sufficient funds can impact the program by causing delays or
preventing important work needed to protect human health and the
environment. For example, at the time
of our fieldwork, a Region 4 official expressed concern about two
partially-funded sites that will require an additional $6 million this fiscal year to maintain
clean-up progress. That official, as
well as officials in Regions 6 and 8, expressed concern over the lack of
funding for sites ready to start remedial activities. Further, a Region 7 official told us that the remediation phase
for several mega-sites may be lengthened because sufficient funds are not
available. For example, the Region may
need to stretch a five-year, $100 million cleanup over 10 years given the
current funding levels. Above all the
operational concerns, however, is the concern that when sufficient funds are
not provided, the risk presented by the site is not fully addressed.
Madame
Chairman, that concludes my remarks. Thank
you for the opportunity to participate today.
I would be happy to respond to
any questions the Committee may have.
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