[CPEO-IRF] New GAO report on closure environmental issues

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

MILITARY BASE CLOSURES
Opportunities Exist to Improve Environmental Cleanup Cost Reporting and 
to Expedite Transfer of Unneeded Property

U.S. Government Accountability Office
January 30, 2006
GAO-07-166
To download the entire report, go to
http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-166

Highlights


While expected environmental cleanup costs for unneeded property arising 
from the 2005 BRAC round are not yet fully known, Department of Defense 
(DOD) data indicate that about $950 million will be needed to clean up 
these bases, adding to the estimated $13.2 billion total cleanup cost 
for the prior rounds. Although DOD's cleanup program has matured 
compared to prior BRAC rounds, there are still many unknowns and the 
cleanup estimate for the 2005 round should be considered preliminary. In 
fact, environmental cleanup costs are likely to increase as more 
intensive environmental investigations are undertaken, additional 
hazardous conditions are discovered, and future reuse plans are 
finalized. Furthermore, Congress does not have full visibility over the 
total cost of DOD's BRAC cleanup efforts because none of the four 
reports DOD prepares on various aspects of environmental cleanup present 
all types of costs-past and future-to complete cleanup at each base. 
Compiling a complete picture of all costs requires extracting 
information from multiple reports, as GAO has done to estimate the total 
cleanup cost for the four prior BRAC rounds. More complete and 
transparent cost information would assist Congress in conducting its 
oversight responsibilities for this multibillion dollar effort.

While GAO's analysis shows that DOD continues to make progress in 
transferring over 502,500 acres of unneeded property from the four prior 
BRAC rounds-78 percent of the acres have now been transferred compared 
to 72 percent 2 years ago-over 112,300 acres remain untransferred. 
Comparatively, a total of about 102,000 acres are potentially 
transferable as a result of the 2005 BRAC round. Impediments to transfer 
continue to be related primarily to a variety of interrelated 
environmental cleanup issues, including limited technology to address 
unexploded ordnance and prolonged negotiations on compliance with 
environmental regulations.

Opportunities exist to expedite the cleanup and transfer of unneeded 
2005 BRAC properties compared with other BRAC rounds. Congress provided 
DOD with a wide range of property transfer authorities for prior BRAC 
rounds. In the past DOD did not use some tools as much as others out of 
deference to community land reuse plans. For example, low- and no-cost 
transfer tools accounted for 65 percent of all acres transferred, 
whereas public and negotiated sales accounted for 5 percent. DOD's March 
2006 guidance now encourages the services to make full use of all tools 
for transferring properties resulting from both the 2005 and prior-year 
BRAC rounds. The services have processes in place to monitor their 
progress to clean up and transfer BRAC properties, but they are not 
required to report periodically to the Office of the Secretary of 
Defense on their successes and challenges in using various transfer 
authorities. Collectively, such lessons learned could help others 
expedite the cleanup and transfer of unneeded properties by maximizing 
the use of all available tools, thereby accelerating the economic 
benefits of property reuse to communities while also saving the ongoing 
caretaker costs being incurred by DOD for unneeded propertie


--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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