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This report responds to your subcommittee's request that we examine Department of Defense (DOD) policies and practices regarding cleanup of environmental contamination at government owned, contractor operated (GOCO) plants, as a follow up to our previous reports that showed inconsistent policies and practices on cost sharing. We reviewed nine higher-cost case studies at the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the military services (1) to assess the consistency of cost-sharing practices across DOD and (2) to compare the service cleanup estimates against DOD'S. Specifically, we identified the actions taken and the types of arrangements for sharing cleanup costs between the government and other responsible parties, and examined site-specific cleanup cost data.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent agency that works for Congress. The GAO watches over Congress, and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayers dollars. The Comptroller General of the United States is the leader of the GAO, and is appointed to a 15-year term by the U.S. President. The GAO wants to support Congress, while at the same time doing right by the citizens of the United States. They audit, investigate, perform analyses, issue legal decisions and report anything that the government is doing. This is one of their reports.
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed Department of Defense (DOD) efforts to clean up environmental damage on DOD-owned property, focusing on: (1) cleanup costs at contaminated facilities; and (2) the DOD approach for sharing cleanup costs between the government and other parties. GAO found that: (1) environmental cleanup at DOD government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) plants and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal will generally take longer and cost about $3 billion, 70 percent more that DOD reported; (2) liability for cleanup falls on a variety of potentially responsible parties, including facility operators and generators of hazardous substances; (3) each of the services and the Defense Logistics Agency has a different policy on cost-sharing for environmental cleanups; (4) Environmental Protection Agency policy states that status as a GOCO operator does not shield a contractor from environmental liability; (5) the military services have not requested that GOCO operators share in the cost of cleaning up past contamination; (6) cleanup is managed by the Army Corps of Engineers at former defense sites and former GOCO facilities sold to the private sector; and (7) a contribution of about $250 million has been obtained from the lessee at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.
The U.S. government could pay billions of dollars to clean up hazardous waste contamination resulting from past activities at Department of Defense (DOD) sites. Non-DOD parties such as private contractors or lessees that may have contributed to such contamination may also be responsible for the costs of cleanup at these sites. The Department and other responsible parties either agree to a cost sharing arrangement with the responsible parties conducting the cleanup or the Department conducts the cleanup and attempts to recover the other parties share after the cleanup. Previous reports identified wide variations in practices within the Department concerning attempts to recover non-DOD parties share of the costs of cleanups and recommended that the Department resolve these inconsistencies. Section 348 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998 required the Department to issue guidance and collect data on cost recoveries. In response, the Department issued guidance that requires its components (the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Defense Logistics Agency) to identify, investigate, and pursue cost recoveries and to report on them in its Defense Environmental Restoration Program Annual Report to the Congress.
While expected environmental cleanup costs for unneeded property arising from the 2005 BRAC round are not yet fully known, Department of Defense (DOD) data indicate that about $950 million will be needed to clean up these bases, adding to the estimated $13.2 billion total cleanup cost for the prior rounds. Although DOD's cleanup program has matured compared to prior BRAC rounds, there are still many unknowns and the cleanup estimate for the 2005 round should be considered preliminary. In fact, environmental cleanup costs are likely to increase as more intensive environmental investigations are undertaken, additional hazardous conditions are discovered, and future reuse plans are finalized. Furthermore, Congress does not have full visibility over the total cost of DOD's BRAC cleanup efforts because none of the four reports DOD prepares on various aspects of environmental cleanup present all types of costs past and future to complete cleanup at each base. Compiling a complete picture of all costs requires extracting information from multiple reports, as GAO has done to estimate the total cleanup cost for the four prior BRAC rounds. More complete and transparent cost information would assist Congress in conducting its oversight responsibilities for this multibillion dollar effort.