Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to improve the quality of information it collected on hazardous waste generation and management capacity.
GAO found that EPA: (1) initiated 13 efforts to improve its previous data collection efforts, which primarily relied on joint federal-state programs that sometimes produced inconsistent, flawed, and incomplete hazardous waste information; (2) implemented information system development practices that were generally consistent with existing federal guidelines, although it needed to refine several data collection mechanisms to ensure the full integration of all data; (3) identified most of the categories of information it needed, although it lacked categories for information about Superfund site waste, other types of waste that would ultimately require management, and the disposal capacity of salt domes or other geologic formations; (4) generally improved the measurement instruments it used to obtain hazardous waste information, but could develop frameworks to help resolve remaining classification and measurement problems; (5) did not provide sufficient funding for states to collect and verify data; (6) was not planning to conduct future national surveys using probability sampling, although they had been the primary source of detailed national information; and (7) had limited authority to require states to collect standard data or hazardous waste handlers to provide the detailed information it required.
