With the enactment of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) in 1980, the Congress created the Superfund program to clean up the nation’s most severely contaminated hazardous waste sites. The program was extended in 1986 and in 1990 and is now being considered again for reauthorization. Under CERCLA, EPA investigates contaminated areas and then places the nation’s most highly contaminated sites on a priority list, called the National Priorities List (NPL), for investigation and cleanup. As of September 1995, EPA had 1,238 sites on the NPL. Of these sites, approximately 190 had PCB contamination and about 80 had dioxin contamination. After EPA puts a site on the NPL, the agency goes through an extensive process to determine what remedy or remedies for cleanup would be appropriate for that site. The remedy selected depends upon the characteristics of the individual site, such as the types and levels of contamination, the complexity of the site’s problem, the site’s risk assessment, and the cleanup standards. EPA weighs each potential remedy against a number of criteria set forth in federal regulations. These criteria include the long-term protection of human health and the environment; compliance with the applicable or relevant and appropriate federal and state laws; and the community’s acceptance of the remedy being considered. Using these criteria, EPA has generally selected incineration as the remedy for many large, complex Superfund sites contaminated with PCBs or dioxin—two compounds that pose significant threats to human health and the environment. (See app. III for a further discussion of incineration technology.) Under CERCLA, incinerators at Superfund sites must comply with applicable technical requirements contained in federal regulations. In particular, the incineration of dioxins is governed by regulations issued under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA), as amended. Similarly, the incineration of PCBs is governed by regulations issued under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). EPA has established two offices to encourage the development and use of innovative technologies. One is the Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation (SITE) program, which evaluates cleanup or waste removal technologies. The second is the Technology Innovation Office (TIO), which acts as a clearinghouse for information on innovative cleanup technologies. In addition, EPA has issued guidance that encourages the consideration of innovative technologies for cleaning up Superfund sites. These efforts do not focus on specific contaminants such as PCBs and dioxin but are designed to promote the development and use of innovative technologies for all types of contaminants. Overall, in 1994, EPA selected innovative technologies in about 20 percent of its decisions on remedies for all Superfund sites. For PCB- and dioxin-contaminated sites, EPA selected innovative treatment technologies to a lesser extent than at other Superfund sites. EPA established the Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation program in 1986 to accelerate the development and encourage the routine use of innovative technologies. Under the SITE program, EPA enters into cooperative agreements with private technology developers who, after refining their technologies on a small scale, may demonstrate them, with support from EPA, at Superfund sites. The SITE program periodically publishes reports containing engineering, cost, and performance information for the technologies evaluated. For example, in fiscal year 1995, SITE spent about $12 million to demonstrate 11 technologies. None of these treated a PCB- or dioxin-contaminated site. Superfund officials involved in cleaning up sites stated that SITE’s reports on demonstrations often focus on the science of the innovative technologies and provide only limited information on potential implementation problems. For example, the Superfund site manager at one site we visited told us that SITE had initially been extremely positive about the scientific potential for one of its demonstrated technologies at that site. However, after learning about the site’s specific characteristics, SITE officials decided the technology was inappropriate for that site. These criticisms remain, although Superfund program officials stated that they had begun to work with SITE in 1993 to make its information more useful, and as a result, additional information has been added to SITE’s technology demonstration reports. SITE program officials noted that resource constraints require them to set priorities for the scope of demonstrations conducted and thus limit the information that can be provided. In 1990, EPA established the Technology Innovation Office to increase the use of innovative treatment technologies. TIO serves as an information clearinghouse to provide (1) prospective technology vendors with information on the extent and nature of sites needing cleanup and (2) cleanup officials with information on the availability of innovative technologies. In addition, TIO attempts to identify why innovative technologies are not being used more frequently. In fiscal year 1995, TIO spent about $2 million to carry out these responsibilities. To serve as an information clearinghouse, TIO maintains several databases containing information on innovative technologies and innovative technology vendors. However, Superfund officials told us that the cost and performance data contained in TIO’s database of innovative technology vendors is vendor-supplied and TIO does not validate it. TIO officials stated that these data are supposed to be only the starting point for identifying potential innovative technologies and that TIO does not have the resources to validate the data. In addition, TIO officials believe that requiring vendors to supply independently validated data might exclude some innovative technology vendors. TIO officials, however, recognize that those responsible for cleaning up hazardous waste sites need reliable cost and performance data and have taken actions to address this problem. For example, working through the Federal Remediation Technologies Roundtable, composed of major federal agencies that carry out remediation research and projects, a guide to documenting remediation projects’ cost and performance was developed. This guide, which all member agencies have agreed to use, provides project managers with standard procedures for collecting and reporting project information. TIO also attempts to encourage the use of innovative technologies by identifying why innovative technologies are not being selected more often at Superfund sites. For example, TIO published a study in April 1995 which showed that Superfund cleanup officials were often eliminating innovative technologies from the remedy selection process without fully considering them. That study, based on 205 sites, found that EPA conducted tests to assess the potential performance of innovative technologies at only 47 sites (less than 25 percent) of the 205 sites. When these tests were conducted, however, innovative technologies were used in about 45 percent of the remedies selected. Superfund officials said that even though guidance encourages the testing of innovative technologies, such tests were not performed in a large number of cases because of time constraints and funding limitations. TIO staff are now considering a number of actions to address these and other problems identified in the report. EPA has issued guidance encouraging greater use of innovative technologies at all Superfund sites where such remedies can provide a viable means for treatment. For example, in guidance issued in June 1991, EPA urged staff responsible for selecting Superfund remedies to consider innovative technologies in their technology evaluations for all sites (including those contaminated with PCBs and dioxin), even when the cost and performance of the innovative technologies were uncertain. The guidance also encouraged EPA project managers to use on-site tests to assess the potential performance of innovative technologies at sites. Furthermore, it provided for expedited funding to facilitate early testing of innovative remedies. EPA officials told us that they are considering revising the guidance to increase the use of on-site tests to determine the potential performance of innovative technologies. However, the officials stated that they want to avoid becoming too prescriptive because the testing of innovative technologies may not be appropriate for all sites. EPA’s most recent data show that EPA selected innovative technologies in about 20 percent of all decisions on remedies made in 1994, up from 6 percent in 1986. However, EPA is using fewer innovative technologies at PCB- and dioxin-contaminated sites than at Superfund sites overall. At sites with PCB contamination, EPA selected innovative technologies that fully treat the contamination at about 10 percent of the sites for which a cleanup technology was selected. In addition, EPA selected innovative technologies that extract the PCB contamination (but do not destroy it) at another 20 percent of the sites for which decisions on cleanup technologies have been made. For these sites, the PCB contamination will have to be treated further with another remedy—such as incineration. For dioxin-contaminated sites, EPA selected innovative cleanup technologies 3 percent of the time. Even though EPA has generally not used innovative technologies for PCB- and dioxin-contaminated sites, it has identified several technologies that have the potential to clean up PCBs and dioxin in the future. However, to be effective, some of these technologies may have to be used in combination. Accordingly, EPA has recently recognized that for some sites, previous decisions on cleanup technologies should be changed if new technologies that provide more efficient and cost-effective cleanups have been developed. EPA has identified technologies that have the potential to become alternatives to incineration for PCB and dioxin contamination in the future. However, EPA believes that these technologies are currently not viable options for cleaning up most PCB- and dioxin-contaminated sites because they are still at their early stages of development. Many of these technologies have been used only in laboratory studies designed to generate data on their potential. Other innovative technologies are relatively more advanced; they have been tested, selected, or actually used to treat PCBs or dioxin at some small, uncomplicated sites and have generated some cost and performance data. However, these technologies still lack the well-documented cost and performance data, under a variety of site conditions, needed to expand their consideration and use. Innovative technologies that could potentially clean PCB and dioxin contamination can generally be grouped into three categories: (1) those that destroy the contamination, (2) those that extract the contamination (which still must be treated), and (3) those that simply contain or immobilize the contamination in place. Innovative remedies that destroy contamination, such as dechlorination, destroy PCB and dioxin molecules by removing chlorine.