From: | Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org> |
Date: | Wed, 15 May 1996 22:41:10 -0700 (PDT) |
Reply: | cpeo-military |
Subject: | C.B.O. ON DEFENSE CLEANUP |
From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org> C.B.O. ON DEFENSE CLEANUP In her March 21, 1996 testimony before the House National Security Subcommittee, Cindy Williams of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) made some important observations about Defense Department (DoD) funding and technology development for environmental restoration - at active, closing, and former bases. The following is excerpted from Williams' prepared testimony: "In addition, past DoD estimates of the cost of cleanup have typically underestimated the cost of the program. Ten years ago, the department estimated that the total cost of the cleanup program would be between $15 billion and $19 billion. CBO estimates, using DoD's figures of March 1995, the total cost of the cleanup program to exceed $40 billion. DoD officials have indicated that even that estimate does not include some of the costs of management, operations, and support of long-term cleanup actions. "DoD's cost estimates for cleanup at the installation level are also subject to considerable uncertainty. For example, estimates of the cost of cleaning up bases scheduled to be closed by BRAC [Base Realignment and Closure] have increased considerably. In 1993, the DoD Inspector General found that the median cost of cleanup for 49 bases being closed exceeded baseline estimates by about 50 percent. "Perhaps of most concern in the long run, reduced current funding for environmental research and development could mean higher future costs of remediation. The development and use of new cleanup technologies offers the prospect of reducing cleanup costs for a wide variety of contaminants below current costs. If those emerging technologies are not funded, DoD will have to pay the much higher costs of using today's technologies. Although funding for research and development of new technologies for cleanup increased dramatically between 1991 ad 1994, it has fallen by about 50 percent since then. "In summary, assuming that current legislative and regulatory policies governing cleanup pertain, we believe that DoD's current estimate may still understate the probable cost of the cleanup program because it does not include important long-term costs, adequately reflect rising costs of cleanup being experienced at its installations, or consider the expanding scope of work to be done. Moreover, hopes to control costs in the future cannot be sustained in the face of shrinking funding for new technologies that could reduce the costs of cleanup." | |
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