The Department of Energy should pick up the pace on its initial reviews of sites potentially contaminated with dangerous “forever chemicals,” the Government Accountability Office said in a report released Wednesday.
The report found DOE has completed initial reviews for approximately one-third of the 57 sites surveyed in the four years since the department launched the effort. DOE should establish defined deadlines for the 37 site reviews still in progress and come up with a plan for the 100-plus sites not covered in the initial survey, the GAO report recommends.
“If sites do not review their historical and current use of PFAS in a timely manner, DOE will not know which sites may be impacted by PFAS contamination, and therefore the sites where DOE should test to ensure it does not pose a risk to human health and the environment,” the report says. “Without such information, DOE will be limited in its ability to prioritize where PFAS cleanup is most needed or estimate cleanup costs.”
Those costs could be imminent as EPA recently announced plans to retain the Biden-era rule designating two of the most well-studied per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — PFOA and PFOS — as hazardous substances eligible for cleanup under the federal Superfund law.
