Summary: Congress established the Superfund program in 1980 to clean up highly contaminated hazardous waste sites. Among other things, the law established a trust fund to help the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pay for cleanups and related program activities. The trust fund was financed primarily by three dedicated taxes until 1995, when the taxing authority expired. EPA continues to discover sites eligible for cleanup under the Superfund program. GAO was asked to examine the current status of the Superfund program, the factors guiding EPA's selection of sites to be placed on its National Priorities List, and the program's future outlook.
The balance of the Superfund trust fund available for future appropriations has decreased significantly since 1996, while highly contaminated hazardous waste sites continue to be added to the National Priorities List (NPL), EPA's list of the nation's most contaminated sites. A decline in revenues to the trust fund has led the Superfund program to rely increasingly on appropriations from the general fund. In EPA's fiscal year 2004 budget request for the Superfund program, the general fund appropriation would make up about 80 percent of the program's total appropriation. At the end of fiscal year 2002, the NPL had 1,233 sites in various stages of cleanup. EPA considers many factors in selecting from the sites that are eligible to be listed, the most prominent of which are the availability of alternative federal or state programs that could be used to clean up the site, the status of responsible parties associated with the sites, and the cost and complexity of the cleanup required. As the Superfund program continues to add sites to the NPL and funding sources shift toward general fund appropriations, the effect of EPA's actions to address future program challenges remains uncertain. Because Superfund lacks indicators to fully measure the outcomes of the program's cleanup efforts, EPA has asked an advisory council to develop criteria by which to measure the program's progress. However, it is unclear whether the advisory council will reach consensus on its recommendations, and its findings are not expected until December 2003, at the earliest. Performance indicators could help EPA and the Congress make the difficult funding, policy, and program decisions that the current budget environment demands.
