Summary: The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to force responsible parties to clean up hazardous waste sites have been successful. In fiscal year 1993, EPA entered into settlements with responsible parties for cleanups valued at $910 million. However, the agency's attempts to recover costs from responsible parties when it has already cleaned up a site have not been as productive. EPA has reached agreements with responsible parties to recover only $1.2 billion of the $8.7 billion it spent on the Superfund program through fiscal year 1993. Several factors account for EPA's low rate of cost recovery. First, EPA has defined recoverable indirect costs narrowly, thus excluding from its recovery efforts $2.9 billion of the money it spent. Second, EPA has not set goals for taking prompt action on cost recovery cases or for recovering a specified percentage of its costs. In addition EPA has not developed information that would lead to better program management, such as data on cost recovery efforts and negotiation results. In addition, to recovering a larger portion of its costs, EPA could charge higher interest rates on the costs it recovers if the law were changed. EPA is now losing millions of dollars annually because of caps on the interest that EPA can charge.
