Hazardous Waste Cleanup: Numbers of Contaminated Federal Sites, Estimated Costs, and EPA's Oversight Role

Abstract

The federal government owns over 700 million acres of land. Some of this landwhich is primarily managed by USDA, Interior, DOD, and DOEis contaminated with hazardous waste from prior uses, such as landfills and mining. To respond to problems caused by improper disposal of hazardous substances in the past, in 1980,Congress passed CERCLA, also known as Superfund. Among other things, CERCLA requires owners and operators of hazardous waste sites to notify the federal EPAwhich manages the Superfund programof the existence of their facilities, as well as known, suspected, or likely releases of hazardous substances.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 11, 2015
Accession Number
AD1176895

Entities

People

  • J. A. Gomez

Organizations

  • United States Government Accountability Office

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Biomedical
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Base Closures
  • Business Administration
  • Congress
  • Contamination
  • Cost Estimates
  • Environment
  • Environmental Protection
  • Environmental Restoration And Remediation
  • Governments
  • Hazardous Waste
  • Hazardous Waste Sites
  • Hazards
  • Law
  • National Governments
  • United States
  • United States Government
  • Waste Disposal Facilities

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Defense Acquisition Program Management
  • Defense Financial Management and Audit.
  • Environmental Engineering.