Environmental Protection: Status of GAO Recommendations Made to EPA since Fiscal Year 2007
Released: 2017-09-06T00:00:00

Letter

Background

Many of our reports and testimonies include recommendations that, if acted upon, may result in tangible benefits for the U.S. taxpayer by improving the federal government’s efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability. Implemented recommendations can result in financial or nonfinancial benefits for the federal government. An estimated financial benefit is based on agency actions taken in response to our recommendations; such benefits can result in reduced government expenditures, increased revenues, or a reallocation of funds to other areas. For example, in fiscal year 2016, our work across the federal government resulted in $63.4 billion in financial benefits. Other benefits that result from our work cannot be measured in dollar terms, and we refer to them as nonfinancial or other benefits. During fiscal year 2016, we recorded a total of 1,234 other benefits from our work that cannot be measured in dollars, but that led to program and operational improvements to the federal government. These benefits are linked to specific recommendations or other work that we completed over several years and could include improvements to agency programs, processes, and policies. In some cases, benefits are realized based on the actions of Congress. For example, since 1994, we have found that EPA faces challenges in its ability to assess and control toxic chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976—largely due to issues of statutory choice, regulatory control, data, confidentiality, workload, and resources. In response to our work and the work of others, Congress passed the Lautenberg Act in 2016, giving EPA greater authority to implement several of our outstanding recommendations related to these six areas and positioning the agency to better protect public health and the environment from the risks posed by toxic chemicals.

As part of our responsibilities under generally accepted government auditing standards, we periodically follow up on recommendations we have made to agencies and report their status to Congress. Agencies also have a responsibility to monitor and maintain accurate records on their progress made toward addressing our recommendations. After issuing a report, we follow up with audited agencies at least once a year to determine the extent to which they have implemented our recommendations and the benefits that they have realized. During these follow-up contacts, we identify for agencies what additional actions, if any, they would need to take to address our recommendations. A recommendation is considered implemented when agencies have taken actions that, consistent with our recommendation, address the issue or deficiency we identified and upon which the recommendation is based. Experience has shown that it takes time for agencies to implement some recommendations. For this reason, we actively track unaddressed (i.e., open) recommendations for 4 years and review them to determine whether implementation can be reasonably expected. The review includes consideration of alternative strategies an agency may have for implementing recommendations. Our experience has shown that recommendations remaining open after 4 years are generally not implemented in subsequent years. We will close a recommendation as not implemented if an agency has indicated that it was not planning to take action or if we have determined that it is unlikely that the agency will take action to address the recommendation. Figure 1 shows our process for monitoring and reporting on recommendations.

We maintain a publicly available database with information on the current status of most open recommendations. The database allows searches by agency, congressional committee, or key words and is available at http://www.gao.gov/openrecs.html.

In addition to our process for monitoring and reporting on recommendations, we use other mechanisms to encourage agencies to implement our recommendations in a timely manner. For example, we initiated an effort in fiscal year 2015 to call attention to unimplemented recommendations that we believe warrant priority attention by the Secretary or agency heads at key departments and agencies. We sent letters to the heads of key executive branch agencies, including EPA, in fiscal years 2015, 2016, and 2017 identifying these high-priority recommendations and urging the agency head to continue to provide attention to these issues.

EPA Has Implemented 191 of 318 GAO Recommendations, Which Relate to a Variety of EPA Operations and Programs

As of August 23, 2017, EPA had implemented 191 of the 318 recommendations we made since fiscal year 2007, and the recommendations fall into six broad categories that relate to EPA operations and programs. EPA had not yet fully implemented the remaining 127 recommendations. Figure 2 shows the status of the 318 recommendations. For recommendations that we made over 4 years ago (i.e., fiscal years 2007 to 2012), EPA had implemented 77 percent. For recommendations made since fiscal year 2013, EPA had implemented 34 percent.

The 318 recommendations we made to EPA since fiscal year 2007 fall into six broad categories that relate to EPA operations and programs and generally align with many of the goals and strategies identified in EPA’s Fiscal Year 2014-2018 Strategic Plan. These six broad categories are: (1) management and operations; (2) water issues, which includes water infrastructure, drinking water, water quality, and ecosystem restoration; (3) environmental contamination and cleanup, which includes environmental cleanup, pollution prevention, hazardous and other waste programs, and emergency management; (4) toxics, chemical safety, and pesticides; (5) public health and environmental justice; and (6) air quality, climate change, and energy efficiency. The percentage of recommendations implemented within each category ranged from 80 percent for the environmental contamination and cleanup category to 48 percent in the management and operations category. Figure 3 shows the number of recommendations we identified in each of these categories and the percentage of recommendations within each category that had been implemented and not implemented.

Almost three-fourths of the recommendations we made since fiscal year 2007 fall into three categories: management and operations, water issues, and environmental contamination and cleanup. The recommendations to EPA relating to management and operations included actions for better managing its grants, better coordinating management of its laboratories, and improving the agency’s information security. Recommendations on water issues included actions targeted at improving the regulation of contaminants in drinking water, improving water quality and ecosystem health in regions such as the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay, and better managing water pollution from both point and nonpoint sources. Recommendations related to environmental contamination and cleanup included: taking actions for better managing cleanup at hazardous waste sites; enhancing responses to disasters, such as the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina in August 2005; and promoting proper disposal and recycling of electronic waste. The remaining quarter of the recommendations fell into the other three categories of toxics, chemical safety, and pesticides; air quality, climate change, and energy efficiency; and public health and environmental justice. Appendix I lists, by category, our reports with recommendations to EPA since fiscal year 2007, and for each report lists the numbers of implemented, not implemented, and total recommendations, as of August 23, 2017.

Of the 127 recommendations that EPA has not implemented, we made 82, or 65 percent, since fiscal year 2013 and 45, or 35 percent, earlier (i.e., fiscal years 2007 to 2012). Most of these recommendations concern EPA management and operations and water issues. Some examples of recommendations that have not yet been implemented in these categories are described below.

Management and Operations

In January 2017, we made recommendations to EPA related to their management of grants. In 2015, EPA awarded roughly $3.9 billion, about 49 percent of its budget, in grants to states, local governments, tribes, and other recipients. These grants supported activities such as repairing aging water infrastructure, cleaning up hazardous waste sites, improving air quality, and preventing pollution. In our January 2017 report, we concluded that EPA’s ability to manage this portfolio depended primarily on grant specialists and project officers, but the agency did not have the information it needed to allocate grants management resources in an effective and efficient manner. In addition, EPA had not identified project officer critical skills and competencies or monitored its recruitment and retention efforts for grant specialists. We recommended that EPA, among other things, develop documented processes that could be consistently applied by EPA offices to collect and analyze data about grants management workloads and use these data to inform staff allocation. We also recommended that EPA review project officer critical skills and competencies and determine training needs to address gaps and develop recruitment and retention performance measures and collect performance data for these measures. According to a May 2017 letter, EPA agreed with the five recommendations we made in the report and identified steps it was initiating to address them. We will continue to monitor EPA’s actions to implement these recommendations.

In August 2014, we made recommendations to EPA related to information security. Federal agencies rely on contractors to operate computer systems and process information on their behalf. Federal law and policy require that agencies ensure that contractors adequately protect these systems and information. In our August 2014 report, we evaluated how six agencies, including EPA, oversaw contractor-operated systems. With regard to EPA, we found that the agency generally established security and privacy requirements for contractors to follow and prepared for assessments to determine the effectiveness of contractors’ implementation of controls but was inconsistent in overseeing the execution and review of those assessments. We recommended that EPA develop, document, and implement oversight procedures for ensuring that, for each contractor-operated system: (1) a system test is fully executed and (2) plans of action and milestones with estimated completion dates and resources assigned for resolution are maintained. In comments on the report, EPA generally agreed with our recommendations and has recently told us that it has taken steps to implement these recommendations. We will evaluate whether these steps meet the intent of the recommendations.

In March 2010, we made recommendations to EPA related to workforce planning. The ability of federal agencies to achieve their mission and carry out their responsibilities depends in large part on whether they can sustain a workforce that possesses the necessary education, knowledge, skills, and other competencies. We and others have shown that successful organizations use strategic workforce planning to help meet present and future mission requirements. In our March 2010 report on workforce planning at EPA and other agencies, we found that EPA’s workforce plan was not clearly aligned with its strategic plan or budget formulation, consistent with leading workforce planning principles. For example, EPA’s workforce plan did not show how full-time equivalent employees, skills, and locations would be aligned with the strategic plan or budget. Without alignment to the strategic plan, we concluded that EPA was at risk of not having the appropriately skilled workforce it needs to effectively achieve its mission. We recommended, among other things, that EPA incorporate into its workforce plan clear and explicit links between the workforce plan and the strategic plan, and describe how the workforce plan will help the agency achieve its strategic goals. In comments on our report, EPA generally agreed with our recommendation. According to EPA, the agency has taken some positive steps toward better workforce planning, such as developing workforce planning gap analyses. However, EPA has not fully implemented this recommendation.

Water Issues

In May 2012, we made recommendations to EPA related to a key program under section 319 of the Clean Water Act to address water pollution from nonpoint sources. Under this program, EPA provides grants to states to implement programs and fund projects that address nonpoint source pollution. We found that EPA’s regional offices had varied widely in the extent of their oversight and the amount of influence they had exerted over states’ nonpoint source pollution management programs. In addition, EPA’s primary measures of effectiveness of states’ management programs did not always demonstrate the achievement of program goals, which are to eliminate remaining water quality problems and prevent new threats from creating future water quality problems in water bodies currently of high quality. To help protect water quality, we recommended that EPA (1) provide guidance to its regional offices on overseeing state programs and, (2) in its revised reporting guidelines to states, emphasize measures that more accurately reflect the overall health of targeted water bodies and demonstrate states’ focus on protecting high-quality water bodies, where appropriate. EPA agreed with these recommendations in its comments on the report. In 2013, EPA issued final guidelines laying out expectations for EPA’s regional oversight and issued a memorandum to its regional managers highlighting their oversight responsibilities. However, in a subsequent report issued in July 2016, we found that EPA’s 2013 guidance did not completely address our recommendation to provide sufficient guidance to states to fulfill their oversight responsibilities. We also found that according to EPA officials, the agency planned to make changes to some of the program’s measures of effectiveness. Although EPA has taken some action, these recommendations remain open pending EPA’s (1) ensuring that the guidelines to states incorporate specific instructions on how to review states’ plans and criteria for ensuring funded projects reflect characteristics of effective implementation and tangible results, and (2) improving its measures of program effectiveness.

EPA’s Implementation of GAO Recommendations and Related Work Has Resulted in Process and Programmatic Improvements and Financial Benefits

We have identified many benefits—process and programmatic improvements and financial benefits—based on EPA taking actions on our recommendations and related work. Since fiscal year 2007, we have identified improvements to EPA’s operations and programs in categories such as management and operations, water issues, and public health and environmental justice. In addition, we have identified financial benefits resulting from the implementation of our recommendations and our related work.

Process Improvements

The following are examples of process improvements we have identified based on actions EPA has taken in response to our recommendations.

Management and Operations

In August 2015, we reviewed EPA’s grant management program, including the extent to which its grants management plan followed leading practices for federal strategic planning. We found that EPA could better ensure the effectiveness of its planning framework for meeting grants management goals. We recommended that EPA incorporate all leading practices in federal strategic planning relevant to grants management as it finalized its draft 2016-2020 grants management plan, such as defining strategies that address management challenges and identifying the resources, actions, and time frames needed to meet EPA’s goals. In response to our recommendation, EPA fully incorporated each of the relevant leading practices for federal strategic planning in its final 2016- 2020 grants management plan, issued in February 2016. Specifically, EPA included an annual priority-setting process to identify strategies to address management challenges and the resources needed to achieve its goals. EPA also incorporated mechanisms to ensure leadership accountability for achieving results, including numeric targets and time frames for each action identified in performance measures. Consequently, EPA has better assurance that its 2016-2020 grants management plan is an effective framework to guide and assess its efforts to meet its grants management goals.

In August 2011, we found that EPA operated 37 laboratories across the nation to provide the scientific research, technical support, and analytical service to support its mission. In that report, we also found that EPA did not use a comprehensive process for managing its laboratories’ workforce and lacked basic information on its laboratory workload and workforce. Without such information, we found that EPA could not undertake succession planning and management to help the organization adapt to meet emerging and future needs. We recommended that EPA for all of its laboratories develop a comprehensive workforce planning process that is based on reliable workforce data and reflects the agency’s current and future needs in the overall number of federal and contract employees, skills, and deployment across all laboratory facilities. EPA generally agreed with our recommendation and, in 2015, developed a comprehensive workforce planning process for all of its laboratories and, according to the agency, collected, verified, and analyzed, from all of its laboratories, workforce data that included personnel’s organization, location, grade levels, and area of expertise.

Water Issues

In October 2012, we found that funding for rural water and wastewater infrastructure was fragmented across the three largest federal programs—EPA’s Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Fund programs and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Utilities Service Waste and Waste Disposal program—leading to program overlap and possible duplication of effort when communities applied for these programs. For example, we found that some communities had to prepare separate environmental analyses for each program, resulting in delays and increased costs to communities applying to the programs. We recommended that EPA and USDA work together and with state and community officials to develop guidelines to assist states in developing uniform environmental analyses that could be used, to the extent appropriate, to meet state and federal requirements for water and wastewater infrastructure projects. In February 2017, EPA and USDA issued a joint memorandum to address concerns identified in our report and highlighted best practices currently employed in some states to eliminate duplicative environmental reviews. In particular, the memorandum highlighted a uniform environmental review document developed by the state of Pennsylvania. To eliminate potential duplication of effort during the environmental review process, the memorandum encouraged state programs to evaluate the best practices and incorporate the practices into their own operations where applicable.

Programmatic Improvements

The following are examples of programmatic improvements we have identified based on actions EPA has taken in response to our recommendations.

Water Issues

Under the Clean Water Act, EPA currently regulates 58 industrial categories of wastewater pollution—such as petroleum refining, fertilizer manufacturing, and coal mining—with technology-based regulations called “effluent guidelines.” Such guidelines are applied in permits to limit the pollutants that facilities may discharge. The Clean Water Act also calls for EPA to revise the guidelines when appropriate. EPA has done so, for example, to reflect advances in treatment technology or changes in industries. EPA uses a two-phase process to identify industrial categories needing new or revised effluent guidelines, including an initial “screening” phase in which EPA ranks industrial categories according to the total toxicity of their wastewater. In September 2012, we concluded that limitations in EPA’s screening phase may have led the agency to overlook some industrial categories that warrant further review for new or revised effluent guidelines. For example, during the screening phase, EPA had not considered the availability of advanced treatment technologies for most industrial categories. We recommended that EPA modify the screening phase of its review process to include a thorough consideration of information on the treatment technologies available to industrial categories as it considered revisions to its screening and review process. In comments on the report, EPA agreed that factoring treatment technology information into its reviews would be valuable. In September 2014, EPA published a combined Final 2012 and Preliminary 2014 Effluent Guidelines Program report that discussed revisions to its screening process in response to our report. Specifically, EPA stated that it recognized the need to consider the availability of treatment technologies, process, changes, or pollution-prevention practices in the screening phase of its process and said that it was targeting new data sources to provide such information. In July 2015, EPA published its “Final 2014 Effluent Guidelines Program” with a diagram showing the change to EPA’s screening process to include screening of treatment technologies.

Public Health and Environmental Justice

EPA established a 1995 Policy on Evaluating Health Risks to Children to ensure that the agency consistently considers children in its actions, since children can be more vulnerable than adults to certain environmental hazards. In August 2013, we found that EPA did not have a specific process for program offices that led regulatory workgroups to document how the agency considers children’s health risks in rulemakings and other actions or how the agency’s analyses comply with the 1995 policy. We recommended that EPA require lead program offices to document their decisions in rulemakings and other actions regarding how health risks to children were considered and that their decisions be consistent with EPA’s children’s health policy. In comments on our report, EPA generally agreed with the recommendation and stated that the Office of Children’s Health Protection worked with the Office of Policy and the program offices to assure a consistent approach for documenting these decisions as part of EPA’s process to develop rules, regulations, and other agency actions. Subsequently, in October of 2014, EPA finalized a template for all EPA employees to use that outlined how to address EPA’s 1995 policy and other requirements under various situations. The template instructs lead program offices to document their decisions in rulemaking and other actions regarding how they considered health risks to children (e.g., conducting a children’s health risk assessment), or provide a rationale for why such an evaluation was not necessary.

Financial Benefits

The following are examples of financial benefits we have identified based on actions EPA has taken in response to our prior reviews.

Environmental Contamination and Cleanup

During the course of work related to a July 2008 report on the funding and reported costs of Superfund enforcement and administrative activities, we reviewed EPA’s methodology for calculating the indirect costs—or administrative costs for managing the Superfund program—that EPA charged responsible parties in fiscal year 2006. In conducting this work, we identified two spending codes for which associated administrative costs had not been carried over into EPA’s calculations of the indirect cost rate applicable to each region for fiscal year 2006. As a result of this error, we determined that the percentage that EPA was charging responsible parties for indirect costs associated with fiscal year 2006 spending was lower than it should have been. In response to our finding, EPA published revised indirect cost rates for fiscal years 2005 and 2006 in May 2008 to correct the error. EPA acknowledged that correcting this error would result in more money being potentially recoverable from responsible parties. In 2010, we estimated that the additional amount EPA has recovered (or would recover) had a present value worth about $42.2 million.

Management and Operations

Since fiscal year 2000, we have issued a body of work aimed at raising the level of attention given to improper payments across government. Our work demonstrated that improper payments have been a long- standing, widespread, and significant problem in the federal government and as a result, contributed to Congress passing the Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 (IPIA). This act, as amended, requires, among other things, that all agencies annually identify and review programs and activities that may be susceptible to significant improper payments, provisions that coincide with recommendations we have made that agencies estimate, reduce, and publicly report improper payments. Subsequently, in 2005, EPA began reporting on the improper payment rate for the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds. By 2009, the most recent year for which we identified financial benefits from the agency addressing improper payments, EPA reported that its total improper payment error rates for the State Revolving Funds declined by 0.16 percent since it first reported on this issue. This resulted in about a $4.5 million decrease in improper payments from the Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds for fiscal years 2008 and 2009.

In conclusion, as the fiscal pressures facing the government continue, so too does the need for executive branch agencies to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government programs and activities. Our recommendations provide a significant opportunity to improve the government’s fiscal position, better serve the public, and make government programs more efficient and effective. We believe that EPA’s implementation of our outstanding recommendations will enable the agency to continue to improve its performance and the efficiency and effectiveness of its operations. We will continue to work with Congress to monitor and draw attention to these important issues.

Chairman Murphy, Ranking Member DeGette, and Members of the Committee, this completes my prepared statement. I would be pleased to answer questions that you may have at this time.

GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments

If you or your staff members have any future questions about this testimony, please contact Alfredo Gómez at (202) 512-3841 or gomezj@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this statement. Key contributors to this testimony include Barb Patterson, Assistant Director; Cindy Gilbert; Anne Hobson; Richard Johnson; Dan C. Royer; and Kiki Theodoropoulos.

Appendix I: GAO Reports since Fiscal Year 2007 with Recommendations to EPA, by Category

Appendix I: GAO Reports since Fiscal Year 2007 with Recommendations to EPA, by Category This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States. The published product may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety without further permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately.