GAO ON RELATIVE RISK

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>

WHAT G.A.O. REALLY SAID ABOUT RELATIVE RISK EVALUATIONS
In July, when Congressman William Clinger (R-Pennsylvania) released a 
General Accounting Office report on federal facilities cleanup, he 
called the situation "mind-boggling," warning that it confirmed his 
"worst fears that the government is not doing a good job with its own 
hazardous waste mess." Initial press coverage of the report caused 
concern among some of the people who work on these issues - such as 
members of the Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration Dialogue 
Committee (FFERDC) - because it seemed to call for a one-size fits all 
system for ranking the risk of contamination at all federal facilities. 
("Federal Facilities: Consistent Relative Risk Evaluations Needed for 
Prioritizing Cleanup," GAO/RCED-96-150, June, 1996.)
In fact, careful reading of the entire report suggests first that the 
situation is NOT alarming and secondly, that federal agencies are 
moving in the right direction in their application of risk evaluation 
to cleanup priority setting.
I. NPL Listing
GAO actually looked at two forms of relative risk evaluation. The first 
was the assessment of contaminated federal facilities to determine 
whether they belong on the "Superfund" National Priorities List (NPL) 
of the nation's most contaminated properties. It reiterated that 
federal land management agencies - within the Interior Department, for 
example - had not yet inventoried their universe of contaminated sites. 
In addition, GAO found that information collected for the purpose of 
NPL listing is incomplete for 1,040 of the 2,070 facilities enumerated 
in the EPA's Federal Facilities docket. (Of the remaining 1,030, 154 
facilities are on the NPL, while 873 didn't qualify. Three have been 
de-listed.)
GAO broke down the 1,040 without final site assessment decisions as follows:
Agency Need PA Need SI Need NPL Scr. Unknown Total
Agriculture 17 24 5 42 88
Defense 84 138 119 222 563
Energy 2 7 5 14 28
Interior 18 37 16 57 128
Transport. 2 21 3 10 36
All others 35 13 9 140 197
TOTAL 158 240 157 485 1,040
 
GAO's terms/headers for the columns above were:
Agency
Awaiting prelimary assessment
Awaiting site inspection
Awaiting final NPL screening
Status unknown (The status of some facilities is unknown because the 
name in EPA's evaluation records cannot always been reconciled with the 
names in the federal facility docket.)
Total
There are several reasons why assessment, inspection, and/or NPL 
screening have not been carried out at those facilities. Most important 
is funding: "According to EPA officials, the agency's budget permits 
the agency to perform final evaluations for only five facilities per 
year." As the above table shows, there are already 157 facilities 
awaiting such screening.
More resources are required, but it is likely that most of the worst 
sites - the ones that have attracted the most public attention - have 
already been rated.
Some sites that have scored high enough, on EPA's hazard ranking 
system, to be NPL-listed have been kept off the NPL for policy reasons. 
This has led decision-makers to move ahead more slowly in evaluating 
similar sites:
"In July, 1995 legislation was enacted requiring EPA, during fiscal 
year 1995, to seek a state's concurrence before including a site on the 
NPL. This provision, which effectively gave governors the authority to 
veto EPA's listing decisions, may significantly affect the consistency 
and comprehensiveness of the NPL. As of February 1996, EPA had sought 
state governor's concurrence to list 14 federal facilities. The 
governors refused to concur with seven listings, approved four, and 
reached no decision on three. Futhermore, according to EPA officials, 
the impact of requiring a state's concurrence is greater than those 
numbers would indicate because EPA's regions will not move a facility 
forward in the Superfund process if a governor's veto is expected. 
EPA's 1996 appropriations language continues the requirement that EPA 
obtain a state's concurrence for the remainder of the fiscal year or 
until CERCLA is reauthorized."
In addition, GAO found that EPA may give NPL-listing a low priority at 
facilities where other factors, such the presence of a RCRA Corrective 
Action cleanup program or base closure, are driving the cleanup.
I have long believed that NPL listing accelerates the cleanup of 
federal as well as privately owned properties, and I support budget and 
policy initiatives to add properties that qualify to the list. 
Nevertheless, it is misleading to suggest that because facilities are 
awaiting NPL screening or have been deferred that federal cleanup 
programs are a mess. Cleanups, in general, are proceeding at seriously 
contaminated properties whether or not they are on the NPL. At a 
handful of major non-closing bases, such as the Badger Army Ammunition 
Plant, in Wisconsin, it is possible that the failure to list the 
property has made it hard to line up remediation funding.
Furthermore, while some federal agencies support the policy decisions 
that have kept facilities off the NPL, the backlogs and deferrals are 
not the result of mismanagement, but of deliberate policy decisions by 
Congress and governors in key states.
II. Priority-Setting
GAO is generally favorable to the Defense and Energy Departments' new 
methods of using relative risk evaluation to help set cleanup funding 
priorities. It even acknowledges FFERDC's recommendation, consistent 
with Defense Department practice, that other factors besides risk 
warrant consideration in setting priorities. But it notes that the 
"high" risk category is too broad. 54% of the roughly 7,500 sites that 
Defense has evaluated are ranked high, creating difficulty for 
allocating resources among those sties. That's a valid concern.
GAO reported its previous call for a national priority-setting process, 
and it noted the National Research Council's recommendation for a 
"unified national process" - a recommendation that has been 
overinterpreted in some circles. In its current report, GAO states, "We 
believe that a consistent approach for relative risk evaluation is an 
essential element in the process for setting cleanup priorities nationally."
In context, however, this does not necessarily mean a national ranking 
system. GAO positively reviewed the regional approach to 
priority-setting initiated by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, 
Southwest Division, in 1992. Navy staff and West Coast regulators 
(states and U.S. EPA) meet regularly (at least annually) to reconsider 
cleanup priorities, using the relative risk ranking as a tool. However, 
GAO cited an EPA official who said that this approach might not scale 
up to cover larger areas. Furthermore: "The EPA official believes that 
the next step fo the West Coast team would be to involve community 
advisory boards in the priority-setting process."
A more challenging next step is to figure out how to apply this 
successful consultative process to the other armed services, which 
organize their cleanup programs by national command, not geography.
If, when Congress looks seriously again at the Superfund law, it seeks 
to require the "consistent" process that GAO recommends, then it will 
be important to ensure that it considers under that rubric successful 
models of regional consultation, such as the Navy's West Coast program, 
as opposed to black-box, top-down uniform ranking systems.
Lenny Siegel