New York Mayor Ed Kotch was famous for asking, How am I doing? The Government Accounting Office (GAO) recently answered that question concerning federal environmental programs. In a recent report, it concluded that federal programs are working, but there is much to be done.

The GAO observed that "Protecting the environment remains a priority for the nation. This issue first came to the forefront in the 1970s when the country faced acute environmental problems, such as seriously polluted waterways, increasing air pollution levels, and the open dumping and burning of wastes. Since then, the quality of the nation's air, water, and other resources has improved, despite increases in both population and levels of economic activity. These improvements, however, have imposed high and growing costs. Annual environmental compliance costs that were $64 billion in 1973 have grown to $119 billion in 1993 and are expected to continue to increase to almost 3 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Product. As a result, there is growing interest in finding more cost-effective ways to achieve environmental protection. ..."

GAO observed that the EPA has historically provided close oversight of state implementation of the environmental laws to ensure they are properly carried out. However, as States increased their capacity to enforce environmental laws, EPA has been accused of not sufficiently tailoring its oversight, leading to State complaints that they are being micro managed by EPA. Furthermore, this situation worsens as States and local governments are being asked to bear more of the costs of environmental enforcement.

GAO observes that a performance-based approach to environmental protection is replacing the traditional command and control approach. GAO observed that Federal/State cooperation agreements, which save both governments money through enhanced operating efficiencies, is emerging.

GAO candidly concedes federal culpability as well. "At the same time, the federal government has emerged as a major polluter in its own right. Liabilities for cleaning up federal hazardous waste sites could total in the hundreds of billions of dollars."

Other issues: The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 required the EPA to enact rules and regulations to ensure air quality. However, GAO notes that EPA has missed over 60 percent of its statutory deadlines imposed by the 1990 Act.

GAO recommends that EPA implement a tracking system that would yield key information to monitor and evaluate the agency's Clean Air rulemaking process. In response, EPA has modified several of its existing information systems to allow manually tracking of the time and resources allocated to agency rulemaking. As a long-term solution, the agency plans to develop a new resource management system that will track implementation progress and resource demands for rulemaking and other activities.

GAO warned that although the Toxic Substances Control Act allows EPA to limit or prohibit the manufacture, distribution, and use of toxic chemicals, EPA has issued only a few regulations under the act. GAO suggested the Congress consider improving EPA's ability to conduct chemical reviews by requiring industry to submit additional data on new chemicals and by shifting to industry some of the burden for compiling data on existing chemicals.

Finally, the Congressional Budget Office has projected that ultimately the nation could need $75 billion to clean up a total of 4,500 nonfederal Superfund sites while the cleanup of contaminated federal facilities is currently costing about $4 billion annually. To encourage the efficient and effective use of limited resources, GAO suggested that Congress consider amending the Superfund legislation to underscore the importance of ranking nonfederal hazardous waste sites so that funding is targeted to the worst sites first.

The information provided in this column is written by Stuart Lieberman,a practicing environmental attorney, and is for general information purposes only. It is not legal advice and should not be used in place of legal advice.

Stuart Lieberman, Esq., and IRED.Com, Inc., will not accept any responsibilty for any reliance on the information in this column or any damages whatsoever resulting from reading this column.