Summary: GAO provided information on approaches by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Congress to make environmental programs more cost-effective.
GAO found that: (1) EPA estimated that by 2000, the United States could be spending $160 billion annually on pollution control, almost 90 percent more than it spent in 1987; (2) the federal budget deficit restricted the government's ability to adequately address all the nation's environmental problems; and (3) although costly, environmental controls resulted in substantial and valuable benefits in human health, recreational opportunities, visibility, and environmental integrity. GAO also found that: (1) the federal budget deficit and a growing list of environmental problems made it increasingly important that environmental policies reflect relative environmental and public health risks, as well as the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of various approaches to reduce those risks; (2) EPA needed to move beyond reliance on regulatory activities to measure its progress and develop environmental indicators that could be linked to program objectives; (3) since the traditional environmental regulatory framework cannot resolve such problems as pollution from small diffuse sources and pollutants that cross from one environmental medium to another, supplementing traditional regulatory approaches with pollution prevention and market incentives would be more economical and effective in controlling and preventing pollution; and (4) since new federal environmental standards place much of the financial burden on local governments to administer and carry out programs, EPA should examine alternatives to addressing the financial needs of small communities in their efforts to comply with federal environmental requirements.
