Summary: In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) and states' progress in implementing the EPA enforcement response policy under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), focusing on: (1) the extent to which EPA and authorized states took timely and appropriate enforcement actions against high-priority violators; (2) EPA oversight of the appropriateness of state enforcement actions; (3) whether EPA criteria for enforcement action produce sufficient and uniform enforcement across EPA regions and the states; and (4) whether EPA and states followed up on enforcement actions to ensure that handlers corrected violations.
GAO found that: (1) states met both the timeliness and appropriateness criteria in 19 of 208 high-priority cases and in 254 of 471 other cases; (2) EPA regions met the criteria in 17 of 97 high-priority cases and 23 of 60 other cases; (3) limited resources, lack of state environmental agency penalty authority, and legal problems that affected EPA enforcement authority resulted in poor performance; (4) EPA did not take enforcement action in any cases where states did not meet enforcement criteria; and (5) the criteria that the regions used for reporting their enforcement performances were inconsistent with the enforcement policy's timeliness and appropriateness measures. GAO also found that EPA actions to improve its and states' performance in meeting enforcement criteria included: (1) codifying state regulations so that EPA could enforce them; (2) proposing a rule that required states to have administrative-order and penalty authority; and (3) issuing guidance documents that outlined enforcement options against federal violators and adopted time frames for escalating unresolved disputes between EPA regions and other federal agencies.
