Why It Matters
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recovered less than half of the $25.8 billion it spent on Superfund cleanup costs at nonfederal National Priorities List (NPL) sites in fiscal years 1996 through 2024, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on cost recovery published Nov. 5. The estimate covers 1,622 NPL sites, and the report says EPA lacks performance goals and measures to assess the effectiveness of its cost recovery efforts across those sites.
The Big Picture
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 established the Superfund program to address sites contaminated with hazardous substances, which have been linked to human health and environmental problems. EPA administers the program and lists the most contaminated sites on the NPL. EPA aims to have responsible parties clean up sites themselves or reimburse the agency, and it pays for cleanups when it cannot identify those parties or they fail to act.
The Hazardous Substance Superfund Trust Fund was primarily financed by Superfund taxes until they expired in 1995. In 2021, Congress began reinstating some of them. GAO says it "was asked to review" EPA funding, expenditures and cost recovery at nonfederal NPL sites.
On staffing, funding and data, the report finds that EPA has fewer experienced staff conducting searches for potentially responsible parties than it did 10 to 15 years ago. In fiscal years 2006 through 2024, the Trust Fund received about $34 billion in constant 2024 dollars, mostly from general fund transfers, and Congress appropriated about $32.8 billion from it for the program. Reliable expenditure data were available only for fiscal years 1996 through 2024, and the recovery figure is a point-in-time estimate because EPA officials say cost recovery is ongoing.
The Bottom Line
GAO made three recommendations, all directed to the EPA administrator to ensure action by the assistant administrator of the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance: establish cost recovery effectiveness goals, routinely collect performance information and use it to assess progress and inform decisions. All three recommendations remain open, and EPA agreed with them. The recommendations table provides no completion date for any of them.
The report ties the stakes to the Trust Fund's role. Measuring performance, such as by region, would show how much of the billions in cleanup costs EPA recovers and which efforts work best, helping EPA determine resource needs and target enforcement. EPA officials said they have not done this because cost recovery is a continuous process that may take years.
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