GAO report on DoD's Approach for cleaning up contaminated sites

[CPEO Moderator <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

The following is an excerpt from the GAO report entitled, "DoD Needs to
Develop a Comprehensive Approach for Cleaning up Contaminated Sites".

The full report can be downloaded as a pdf at:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04147.pdf
_________________________________________________________________

DOD has made limited progress in its program to identify, assess, and
clean up sites that may be contaminated with military munitions. While
DOD had identified 2,307 potentially contaminated sites as of September
2002, DOD officials said that they continue to identify additional sites
and are not likely to have a firm inventory for several years. Of the
identified sites, DOD had initially determined that 362 sites required
no further study or cleanup action because it found little or no
evidence of military munitions. For 1,387 sites, DOD either has not
begun or not completed its initial evaluation or
determined that further study is needed. DOD has completed its
assessment of 558 sites, finding that 475 of these required no cleanup
action. The remaining 83 sites required some cleanup action, of which
DOD has completed 23.

DOD does not yet have a complete and viable plan for cleaning up
military munitions at remaining potentially contaminated sites. DOD's
plan is lacking in several respects, including the following:

? Essential data for DOD's plan may take years to develop. Not all the
potential sites have been identified, and DOD has set no deadline for
doing so. Also, DOD intends to use a new procedure to assign a relative
priority for the remaining 1,387 sites, but it will not complete the
reassessments until 2012. Until these are done, DOD cannot be assured
that it is using its limited resources to clean up the riskiest sites
first.

? DOD's plan relies on preliminary cost estimates that can change
greatly and the reallocation of funds that may not be available. For
example, the Air Force used estimated, not actual, acreage to create its
cost estimates, limiting the estimate's reliability and DOD's ability to
plan and budget cleanup for these sites. Also, DOD expects additional
funds will become available for munitions cleanup as other DOD hazardous
waste cleanup efforts are completed. However, some of these efforts are
behind
schedule; therefore, funds may not become available as anticipated.

? DOD's plan does not contain goals or measures for site assessment and
cleanup. DOD recently established a working group tasked with developing
agencywide program goals and performance measures, but not
service-specific targets, limiting DOD's ability to ensure that the
services are making progress in cleaning the potentially contaminated
sites and achieving the overall goals of the program as planned.

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