Summary: Under the Superfund program, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for recovering from responsible parties billions in costs associated with cleaning up the worst hazardous waste sites. In 1992 and again in 1995, GAO cited the Superfund as a "high-risk" government program and noted that EPA lacked the information needed to adequately management and support is cost recovery efforts. EPA's cost recovery effort is supported by several financial and records management systems. Because of limitations in these systems, cost recovery staff cannot fully depend on the system to provide all the information needed for cost recovery. Instead, staff must do excessive manual searches and reconciliations to ensure that the information supporting cost recovery cases is accurate, reliable, and complete. EPA is aware of these limitations and has taken steps to address them. For example, planned modifications to the financial systems should produce more detailed cost data, thus reducing manual reconciliation efforts. GAO notes additional measures that EPA could take to ensure that its systems provide the best possible support for its cost recovery efforts.
