[CPEO-MEF] MUNITIONS: GAO review Munitions Response program

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

MILITARY MUNITIONS RESPONSE PROGRAM
Opportunities Exist to Improve Program Management

Government Accountability Office
GAO-10-384
April 9, 2010

HIGHLIGHTS

Why GAO Did This Study

The Department of Defense (DOD) established the military munitions 
response program (MMRP) in 2001 to clean up sites known to be or 
suspected of being contaminated with military munitions and related 
hazardous substances. Cleanup of sites on active and base realignment 
and closure installations is the responsibility of the military service 
- Air Force, Army, Navy, or Marine Corps - that currently controls the 
land, and the Army has delegated execution of cleanup of formerly used 
defense sites (FUDS) to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps). GAO 
was mandated to assess the (1) MMRP staffing and funding levels; (2) 
progress DOD has made in cleaning up munitions response sites; (3) 
extent to which DOD has established MMRP performance goals; and (4) 
extent to which DOD collects data on factors influencing project 
duration, as well as the accuracy of its cleanup cost estimates. GAO 
analyzed MMRP data and DOD documents and interviewed officials from DOD, 
the military services, and the Corps.

What GAO Found

The military services and the Corps do not track the time that staff 
work on MMRP activities separately from the time they spend on another 
environmental restoration program - the Installation Restoration Program 
(IRP). Consequently, it is not possible to determine the staffing levels 
for the MMRP. In addition, obligated funds for the MMRP increased from 
$95 million in fiscal year 2002 to approximately $284 million in fiscal 
year 2008, and the military services and the Corps directed 11 percent 
of their total MMRP and IRP environmental restoration funds to the MMRP 
during the period - a total of about $1.2 billion to the MMRP compared 
with $9.7 billion to the IRP.

DOD reported to Congress that it had completed its cleanup response for 
1,318 of its 3,674 sites by the end of fiscal year 2008; however, for 
1,234 of these sites, DOD's response was an investigation that 
determined cleanup was not necessary. The remaining 84 sites were 
cleaned up because of such factors as imminent danger to public safety 
and pressing military mission and land reuse needs. In addition, the 
military services and the Corps are still in the process of gathering 
information necessary to prioritize most sites in the MMRP inventory for 
cleanup. When this process is complete, the military services and the 
Corps will consider this information along with other factors, such as 
land reuse plans, to determine which sites to clean up first. However, 
DOD has not issued guidance on how factors other than risk should be 
considered when making decisions about which sites to sequence first for 
cleanup, and the Air Force, the Army, and the Corps have begun to 
independently develop their own approaches. Using varying approaches 
could lead to inconsistent sequencing decisions.

DOD has not yet established a performance goal for implementing the 
cleanup remedy (referred to as "remedy in place") or achieving the 
cleanup objective (referred to as "response complete") at munitions 
response sites located on FUDS, as required by the fiscal year 2007 
National Defense Authorization Act.  The act also directs DOD to report 
on interim goals it determines feasible for achieving the performance 
goals, but DOD has not yet done so. Performance goals are important 
because they are used to track progress toward cleaning up munitions 
response sites. By establishing goals, DOD would have better information 
with which to measure MMRP progress.

DOD gathers data on two of the factors - site size and type of hazard - 
that can influence project duration at military munitions response 
sites. As would be expected, these data indicate that the larger the 
munitions response site and the more complex the type of hazard, the 
longer it takes to clean up the site. In addition, because data on funds 
obligated to complete specific phases of the cleanup process are not 
included in DOD's database for many munitions response sites, it is not 
possible to assess the accuracy of the military services' and the Corps' 
cost estimates for the MMRP.

What GAO Recommends

GAO recommends that Congress consider requiring DOD to report separately 
on sites where response is complete because they needed no cleanup, and 
that DOD issue guidance on how factors other than relative risk should 
be considered in munitions response site sequencing decisions, and set 
FUDS performance goals as required by law. DOD partially agreed with the 
recommendations but not with the matter for congressional consideration.







For more information, see
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-384

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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