People living near a contaminated site, those who have financial responsibility for a site, journalists, local officials, and Members of Congress all want reliable and readily accessible site-specific information. Yet, even for the nation’s most contaminated sites – those on the U.S. EPA’s National Priorities List (NPL) - such information can be hard to come by.

RFF researchers Kate Probst and Diane Sherman have completed a new study aimed at developing more meaningful measures of success for the nation's Superfund Program, Success for Superfund: A New Approach for Keeping Score. The report was funded by the EPA’s Office of Solid Waste & Emergency Response.

Success for Superfund:
A New Approach for Keeping Score

To correct the situation, the authors recommend that EPA create:

• a standardized Scorecard for each NPL site that contains concise, up-to-date information on site progress and key attributes, which should be updated at least quarterly.
• a one-page NPL Report Card that includes a subset of information from the NPL Scorecard containing the most important measures of site progress, plus basic background information; and
• a web-based Superfund Annual Report that summarizes information on progress for all NPL sites and contains other indicators of program performance.