The National Priorities List (NPL) is EPA’s list of hazardous waste sites that present the greatest long-term threats to human health and the environment. After being placed on the NPL, a site generally proceeds through the remedial program, which is responsible for conducting long-term cleanups. A remedial cleanup starts with a remedial investigation, which assesses in detail the contamination and related environmental and health risks, and a feasibility study, which evaluates alternative remedies for cleaning up a site. After one or more cleanup remedies are selected, EPA or, under EPA’s oversight, the parties responsible for contaminating the site design the technical drawings and develop specifications for the remedial actions. The remedial actions are then constructed or implemented. To organize cleanup activities, EPA may divide a site into two or more “operable units” corresponding to different physical areas at the site or different environmental media, such as soil or groundwater. Under CERCLA, EPA has the authority to compel parties responsible for the contamination at a site to perform the cleanup. EPA may also pay for the cleanup and attempt to recover the costs. Site cleanups conducted by EPA are financed through a trust fund, commonly called the Superfund, established under CERCLA. The state in which a site is located may also carry out a CERCLA cleanup and related actions at the site under an agreement with EPA. In addition to using the Superfund to pay for remedial actions at NPL sites, EPA can use the fund to pay for removal actions at NPL and other sites. Removals are shorter-term actions that generally address immediate threats from hazardous substances—such as removing leaking hazardous waste containers. These actions may be performed instead of or in addition to the remedial actions. Removal actions may use some of the same cleanup methods as the remedial program but are typically faster because they use a simpler site assessment and remedy selection process. EPA uses a database called the Comprehensive Environmental Response and Liability Information System (CERCLIS) to track activities at NPL and other sites. CERCLIS also contains the dates by which EPA regions are planning to select remedies at NPL sites. Data entries to CERCLIS must be supported by specific documents required by the Superfund/Oil Program Implementation Manual. For example, an entry showing the completion of a remedy design by a responsible party must be supported by an EPA-approved final design document. EPA allocates the annual Superfund appropriation it receives from the Congress for various program functions. For example, it estimates the funds that will be needed to continue work at ongoing remediation projects and to conduct emergency removal actions. After these and other needs are provided for, it assigns the remaining funds to new cleanup actions. It uses a National Prioritization Panel to allocate these remaining funds to sites ready to start new remedial actions and to unusually large removal actions beyond what can be funded through the regular removal allocation. The Prioritization Panel, which consists of regional and headquarters officials, ranks new remedial and removal actions proposed by the regions in order of priority based on the risks the sites pose and other factors. EPA approves funding for projects based on these priority rankings. As of September 30, 1997, EPA had selected all remedies at about 70 percent of the NPL sites listed as of that date. It plans to complete the selection of remedies for an additional 22 percent of these sites by the end of fiscal year 1999. As of September 30, 1997, EPA had completed the selection of remedies at 926 (about 70 percent) of the 1,327 NPL sites listed as of that date that the Superfund program is expected to clean up. In addition, EPA had selected at least one remedy at another 222 sites. Almost 60 percent (133) of the sites with at least one remedy selected had only one more remedy to be selected. In total, 1,925 (almost 70 percent) of the 2,753 remedies expected to be selected for the sites listed by September 30, 1997, had been chosen. No remedies had been selected for 179 of the NPL sites. (App. I contains summary data on the status of remedy selection as of September 30, 1997, for nonfederal and federal sites; app. II summarizes remedy selection activity by state; app. III shows the remedy selection status of each NPL site; and app. IV list sites with at least one remedy selected and only one more to be selected.) Remedy selection was not as far along at federal sites as at nonfederal ones. All remedies had been selected for about 76 percent of the nonfederal sites (890 of 1,169 sites) compared with about 23 percent of the federal sites (36 of 158 sites). EPA had selected about 81 percent of the cleanup remedies planned for nonfederal sites (1,444 of 1,792 remedies) and about 50 percent of the cleanup remedies planned for federal sites (481 of 961 remedies). EPA officials said that the slower pace of remedy selection at federal sites occurred because many were listed on the NPL after nonfederal sites and were larger and more complex. They said that their latest data showed that federal sites had an average of 8 operable units, while nonfederal sites contained 1.8 operable units on average. (See fig. 1 for the relative status of remedy selection at nonfederal and federal sites, as of September 30, 1997.) We developed information from the CERCLIS database and a survey of EPA regions to show the number of sites that are expected to complete remedy selection in future years and the number of remedies planned to be selected at all sites in those years. (Appendix V shows the steps we took to confirm the planned remedy selection dates recorded in CERCLIS.) Our analysis indicates that in fiscal year 1998, EPA expects to complete remedy selection for 138 of the NPL sites that were listed as of September 30, 1997, and in fiscal year 1999, it expects to complete remedy selection for another 151 sites. If these plans are realized, by September 30, 1999, EPA will have selected all remedies for 1,215 sites, or 92 percent, of the 1,327 NPL sites listed as of September 30, 1997, that are expected to require remedies. Remedies will have been selected for about 95 percent of nonfederal sites (1,109 of 1,169 sites) and for about 67 percent of federal sites (106 of 158 sites). See fig. 2 for the number and percentage of nonfederal and federal sites that had all remedies selected by the end of fiscal year 1997 or that are expected to have all remedies selected by the end of fiscal years 1998 or 1999, or later. Only 112 sites listed as of September 30, 1997, are not expected to have all remedies chosen by the end of fiscal year 1999. These consist of 52 federal and 60 nonfederal sites. A list of these 112 sites with the date they were listed on the NPL is shown in app. VI. CERCLIS contains information on the phase of cleanup reached by each operable unit at each NPL site. These cleanup phases include, in chronological order, the start and completion of a site study, the selection of a remedy, the start and completion of a remedial design, and the start and completion of a remedial action. CERCLIS also indicates whether all remedies have been constructed at sites. To test the reliability of CERCLIS data regarding the cleanup phase reached at NPL sites, we selected a random sample of 98 NPL sites that had not reached the “construction complete” stage as of September 30, 1997, and sought confirmation from EPA’s regional offices of the most recent remedial activity reported by CERCLIS for each operable unit at the sites. We excluded sites at which construction was complete at all operable units because EPA’s Inspector General had recently confirmed that the status of these sites has been accurately reported by EPA. We selected from CERCLIS the most recent remedial action for 270 operable units at the 98 sampled sites. We requested that the regions provide us with documentation to support these actions. We considered the documentation provided to be adequate to confirm actions at 95 percent (93) of the sites. Regions reported that at five sites CERCLIS incorrectly recorded the status of cleanup work. At two of these sites, one or more operable units had not reached the cleanup stage recorded in CERCLIS; at two other sites, an operable unit had progressed beyond the stage indicated by CERCLIS; and at the fifth site, an action that was recorded as a remedial action in CERCLIS was actually a removal action. Regional information management personnel attributed these errors to data entry problems and agreed to correct the database. On the basis of our sample results, we estimate that the cleanup status of NPL sites reported by CERCLIS, as of September 30, 1997, was accurate for 95 percent (plus or minus 4.4 percent) of these sites. Our estimate of accuracy is limited to the CERCLIS data showing the status of cleanup work. More sites are expected to be ready to begin cleanup actions requiring expenditures from the Superfund in fiscal year 1998 than can be started with the funds allocated for new actions. As of June 5, 1998, EPA had approved about $33 million in funding for new cleanup actions at 8 sites and had identified 38 other sites that could begin cleanup actions in fiscal year 1998 at an estimated cost of $230 million. EPA officials expect that about $100 million will be available to fund new cleanup actions by the end of the fiscal year, leaving a shortfall of about $163 million. EPA officials believe that $100 million will fund cleanup actions at up to 20 sites; the exact number will be determined by the cost of the individual projects selected. According to our analysis of EPA’s data, there could be at least 26 sites where new cleanup actions cannot be started in fiscal year 1998 because funds will not be available.