Environmental Management met or was on schedule to met 74.4 percent of its enforceable agreement milestones at the end of 1993. Almost 80 percent of the environmental restoration budget request for 1995 is needed to meet requirements of compliance agreement milestones or environmental regulations. Since 1979, the Department of Energy has entered into 93 site-specific enforceable agreements with the Environmental Protection Agency and States in which Department facilities are located. Environmental Management shares responsibility with other Department of Energy programs in meeting the requirements of these agreements. Twenty-two are inactive, either because the compliance issues have been corrected or the agreements have been superceded by more recent agreements.
Enforceable milestones dictate schedules of activities that are required in an agreement.
In 1993, the Environmental Management program was responsible for meeting 451 compliance agreement milestones. As illustrated in Figure 5, it met 331, or 73.4 percent. Milestones were missed because of additional regulatory issues, the discovery of new problems, lack of technology, or inadequate knowledge of the problem when establishing milestones. When a milestone is missed, regulators can take a variety of actions, including assessing fines and penalties or seeking injunctions. More specific information on milestones can be found in the site descriptions and performance reports.