Natural Resources and Environment - Hazardous Waste Facilities with Interim Status May Be Endangering Public Health and the Environment: Ced-81-158 (Paperback)

When the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act was enacted, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was directed to develop regulations governing hazardous waste facilities. After much delay, EPA finally issued interim status requirements outlining minimum national requirements. GAO was requested to determine: (1) the extent to which facilities with interim status meet the EPA requirements; (2) whether the requirements developed by EPA are sufficient to protect the public health and welfare; and (3) how effectively and thoroughly EPA is monitoring and enforcing these requirements. The review focused on activities performed by EPA and six selected states. GAO found that: (1) not all facilities which store, treat, or dispose of hazardous waste were included by the interim status process or that facilities with interim status meet the regulations and requirements; (2) the regulations that were issued were largely administrative and nontechnical and were not intended to provide complete health and environmental protection; and (3) monitoring and enforcement of the regulations has been limited in that only a limited number of inspections have been performed by EPA and the states, the inspections resulted primarily in the issuance of compliance orders for administrative violations, and the number and amounts of fines levied have been small. EPA performed little follow-up to determine if all existing hazardous waste facilities, required by regulations, submitted applications. The interim status application process was not designed to determine compliance with the regulations and requirements, and the applications sought little information which could have been useful to EPA in determining problem areas and inspection needs.