After a possible hazardous waste site is reported to EPA, it is evaluated to determine whether it should be placed on the National Priorities List (NPL), EPA’s list of sites that present serious threats to human health and the environment. The cleanup at an NPL site consists of several phases. First, through the remedial investigation and feasibility study, the conditions at a site are studied, problems are identified, and alternative methods to clean up the site are evaluated. Then, a final remedy is selected, and the decision is documented in a record of decision. Next, during an engineering phase, called the remedial design, technical drawings and specifications are developed for the selected remedy. Finally, in the remedial action phase, a cleanup contractor begins constructing the remedy according to the remedial design. Under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, (CERCLA), which established the Superfund program, EPA must give preference to those long-term cleanup actions that permanently and significantly reduce the volume, toxicity, or mobility of hazardous substances at a site. Under CERCLA, parties responsible for cleaning up sites can include site owners and operators, as well as generators and transporters of hazardous waste. As of August 1998, 1,193 sites were listed on the NPL, and another 56 were proposed for listing. Remedies had been constructed at 526 sites. Since the Superfund program began, 175 sites have been deleted from the NPL. In addition, the program has conducted about 5,000 removal actions—short-term response actions to address emergency and other situations—at NPL and other sites. Our reviews have shown that the Superfund cleanup process can be long and expensive. In March 1997, we reported that the cleanup of nonfederal sites completing the cleanup process in 1996 had taken an average of 10.6 years after placement on the NPL and that remedy selection at sites completing that phase of the cleanup process in 1996 had taken an average of 8.1 years after a site’s listing. In September 1997, we reported on a growing number of expensive Superfund cleanups. We said that in 1996 EPA had spent $10 million or more in that year alone on nine sites, up from two sites with the same level of annual spending in 1989. Spending on the nine sites, which represented less than 3 percent of the sites where EPA spent money for remedial actions, totaled about $238 million, almost 57 percent of remedial action spending at all sites. Beginning in 1993, EPA launched a series of administrative reforms to address a wide range of Superfund concerns. These reforms have attempted to speed up site investigations, choose more cost-effective remedies, reduce litigation, and make other improvements. According to EPA officials, the reforms have begun to work. EPA officials believe that cleanup durations have recently been reduced to an average of 8 years. In addition, the National Remedy Review Board EPA created to review proposed site cleanup remedies, had saved $37 million as of November 1997 through its examination of 20 remedies. EPA has also encouraged its regions to revisit remedy decisions when new information or technical advances indicate that the intended level of health or environmental protectiveness might be achieved at less cost. According to EPA, these remedy updates had saved at least $725 million at over 120 sites as of November 1997. EPA also made it easier for parties with only minimal responsibility for site contamination to settle their liability with lower legal expenses. All 50 states have established their own clean up programs for hazardous waste sites, according to a 1998 survey by the Environmental Law Institute. Some of these state programs can handle highly contaminated sites, whose risks could qualify them for the Superfund program, as well as less dangerous sites. Some states initially patterned their cleanup programs after the Superfund program, but over the years, in an effort to clean up more sites faster and less expensively, have developed their own approaches to cleaning up sites. States accomplish cleanups under three programs: (1) voluntary cleanup programs that allow parties to clean up their sites without enforcement action, often to increase the site’s economic value; (2) brownfields programs that encourage the voluntary cleanup of sites in urban industrial areas to reuse the sites and avoid the expansion of industry into “greenfields,” that is, undeveloped land; and (3) enforcement programs that oversee the cleanup of the most serious sites and force uncooperative responsible parties to clean up their sites.States generally use their voluntary and brownfields programs to clean up less complex sites by offering various incentives to responsible parties, such as reduced state oversight. Some states maintain cleanup funds to pay all or a portion of the costs of cleanups at sites for which responsible parties able to pay for full cleanups cannot be found. Hazardous waste officials in each of the seven states we contacted identified practices used at sites sufficiently contaminated to be included in the Superfund program that they believe achieve faster and less costly cleanups than would occur under the Superfund program. Some of these practices are designed to facilitate faster remedy selection, thereby saving time or money before site cleanup begins. Other practices allow the implementation of less expensive cleanup remedies that officials believe are nonetheless protective of human health and the environment. Two states have adopted practices that reduce the liability of parties who might be responsible for cleanup costs under Superfund’s liability rules. State officials said that these practices have been applied to some state program sites that are sufficiently contaminated to qualify for the NPL. Although the officials described instances in which these practices have yielded benefits, none could formally document the time and cost savings of the practices. State officials from all seven states described practices that they believe facilitate faster remedy selection at contaminated sites, including sites contaminated enough to qualify for Superfund cleanups. These officials said that the use of preestablished cleanup standards or of presumptive remedies, that is, remedies proven to be effective for certain cleanup problems, without extensive consideration of alternate remedies, can expedite remedy selection. Officials of five states said that more flexible public involvement requirements can save time when cleanups are not controversial. Officials representing six state programs said that selecting cleanup remedies for sites on the basis of preestablished standards that specify the maximum concentrations of contaminants in soil and water after cleanup, without conducting time-consuming, site-specific risk assessments, speeds up the remedy-selection process. Illinois, for example, allows the use of “look-up tables” that specify maximum concentration levels for about 150 specific soil and groundwater contaminants. These look-up tables, according to the state officials, quickly and clearly defined the end goal of the site cleanup without a risk assessment, allowing the state and the responsible parties to determine how best to achieve this standard. According to the state officials, the use of the statewide standards offers a time savings when compared to the approach that the sites in EPA’s Superfund program follow. EPA has developed a few soil cleanup standards and may in certain circumstances apply standards from its water programs and state standards at Superfund sites; however, the Superfund regulations require that each site receive a baseline risk assessment showing the need for action. These risk assessments characterize the current and potential threats to human health and the environment posed by contaminants at the site. Officials in both Illinois and Pennsylvania said that eliminating risk assessments can save considerable time. According to an Illinois official, while the duration of risk assessments varies by site, a risk assessment can add as much as 2 years to the remedy-selection process, while a Pennsylvania official said that many months can be saved. Officials in five states said that, in comparison to EPA, they have less rigorous requirements for extensive public involvement in remedy selection. According to New Jersey program officials, state law requires that program officials notify local officials—such as the mayor’s office or the municipal health department—about an impending site cleanup. The state then generally defers the decision about public meetings or other more extensive forms of public outreach to local officials. State officials explained that more extensive public involvement measures are not required—although the state may pursue them if it sees the need—because public meetings are often sparsely attended, and the results of such efforts do not justify the time and resources required. New Jersey’s approach contrasts with EPA’s more extensive public involvement requirements. The Superfund program’s regulations require that at each NPL site, EPA develop a community relations plan describing a community’s information needs and outlining ways that the agency will meet these needs. Furthermore, EPA must notify groups affected by the site of the availability of technical assistance grants that can be used to hire experts to explain technical information about the site. EPA must also allow adequate opportunity for public comment, such as at a public meeting. A transcript of the public meeting must be made available to the public as well. The final cleanup plan must include a response to each significant comment and question received. EPA headquarters officials said that they could tailor community involvement procedures at sites, depending on the circumstances, but according to the officials, the minimum EPA requirements exceeded the simple notice procedures New Jersey used. Texas officials said that their program’s greater use of standard cleanup approaches—known as presumptive remedies—has significantly reduced the time and expense involved in the remedy-selection process. Presumptive remedies are remedies that have proven effective in cleaning up a particular kind of hazardous waste site and would presumably work at similar sites in the future. Such remedies can be viewed as off-the-shelf solutions that can be selected with less study of alternative remedies in the absence of site-specific conditions requiring such consideration. Because presumptive remedies allow the state to focus quickly on one or a limited range of remedies, they can save considerable time and expense in the remedy-selection process. On the basis of a comparison of a limited number of state sites, Texas officials estimated that the studies at presumptive remedy sites were less than half as costly as the full feasibility studies that were conducted at other sites. Officials of three other states said that they also had a greater number of presumptive remedies than did EPA.