C.B.O. ON DEFENSE CLEANUP

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>]

From: Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@igc.org>

C.B.O. ON DEFENSE CLEANUP
In her March 21, 1996 testimony before the House National Security 
Subcommittee, Cindy Williams of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) 
made some important observations about Defense Department (DoD) funding 
and technology development for environmental restoration - at active, 
closing, and former bases. The following is excerpted from Williams' 
prepared testimony:
"In addition, past DoD estimates of the cost of cleanup have typically 
underestimated the cost of the program. Ten years ago, the department 
estimated that the total cost of the cleanup program would be between 
$15 billion and $19 billion. CBO estimates, using DoD's figures of 
March 1995, the total cost of the cleanup program to exceed $40 
billion. DoD officials have indicated that even that estimate does not 
include some of the costs of management, operations, and support of 
long-term cleanup actions.
"DoD's cost estimates for cleanup at the installation level are also 
subject to considerable uncertainty. For example, estimates of the cost 
of cleaning up bases scheduled to be closed by BRAC [Base Realignment 
and Closure] have increased considerably. In 1993, the DoD Inspector 
General found that the median cost of cleanup for 49 bases being closed 
exceeded baseline estimates by about 50 percent.
"Perhaps of most concern in the long run, reduced current funding for 
environmental research and development could mean higher future costs 
of remediation. The development and use of new cleanup technologies 
offers the prospect of reducing cleanup costs for a wide variety of 
contaminants below current costs. If those emerging technologies are 
not funded, DoD will have to pay the much higher costs of using today's 
technologies. Although funding for research and development of new 
technologies for cleanup increased dramatically between 1991 ad 1994, 
it has fallen by about 50 percent since then.
"In summary, assuming that current legislative and regulatory policies 
governing cleanup pertain, we believe that DoD's current estimate may 
still understate the probable cost of the cleanup program because it 
does not include important long-term costs, adequately reflect rising 
costs of cleanup being experienced at its installations, or consider 
the expanding scope of work to be done. Moreover, hopes to control 
costs in the future cannot be sustained in the face of shrinking 
funding for new technologies that could reduce the costs of cleanup."