Contracting Problems At Epa PDF Download

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) response to prior GAO recommendations that EPA strengthen its management of Superfund contracts, focusing on recommendations that EPA: (1) control contractor costs; (2) set contractor indemnification and conflict-of-interest policy; and (3) develop a plan to reduce its backlog of unaudited Superfund contracts. GAO found that EPA: (1) still does not require its regional offices to prepare cost estimates of cleanup studies and as a result the regions are too dependent on the contractors' own cost proposals; (2) does require Superfund managers to review contractor invoices for reasonableness, but contracting officials in two of the four regions examined estimated that project managers were conducting invoice reviews for only about half of their contracter's invoices; (3) has not corrected the problem of excessive contractor indemnification and is still not tracking the contractors' efforts to obtain private insurance; (4) established a four-person conflict-of-interest unit to develop agency policy and guidance, but most of the previously reported problems continued to exist; (5) is developing a plan to increase contract audits and has requested increased funding to reduce a backlog, but due to proposed staffing and budget cuts, increased coverage is doubtful; and (6) has acknowledged many of the problems GAO has reported, but has not addressed them sufficiently to actually correct the problems.