GAO Flags $1.5 Billion in DOE Cleanup Repairs, Calls for Better Planning

Aging buildings, incomplete records and patchy maintenance planning are pushing up the bill for the Department of Energy’s environmental cleanup work, and the Government Accountability Office says the government is leaving money on the table because it cannot consistently see which repairs matter most.

In a May 5 report, GAO said the Office of Environmental Management reported more than $1.5 billion in repair needs across about 4,300 operating facilities at 15 cleanup sites as of June 2025. Annual maintenance spending has climbed to more than $950 million in fiscal 2026, nearly double the level in fiscal 2020, even as many of the facilities are now 50 to 70 years old and well past their intended design life.

GAO’s central complaint is not just that the infrastructure is old. It is that DOE-EM’s data systems do not line up well enough to steer money to the right places. The office relies on a Master Asset Plan to document maintenance needs, but 8 of 13 EM sites told GAO that the plan does not capture their full needs because site-level data is more detailed than what headquarters uses. GAO also found some scorecards contained inaccurate or unsupported information and that corrective action plans were not completed in some cases, undercutting the data-validation process required under DOE Order 430.1C.

That matters because EM is maintaining a sprawling portfolio: about 2,200 buildings, 2,500 other structures and facilities, and roughly 1,200 trailers and support systems such as roads and utilities. GAO said EM spends about $781 million a year on that upkeep, but piecemeal fixes have in some cases cost more than replacement would have. The agency also identified 19 projects in a cost-savings model that could generate about $120 million if surplus funds were redirected, yet EM has not clearly communicated those potential savings to Congress.

The broader cleanup mission raises the stakes. DOE created the Office of Environmental Management in 1989 to deal with hazardous and radioactive waste from decades of weapons production and nuclear energy research, and GAO says the office has spent more than $215 billion since then. With more than 11 million cubic meters of waste still tied to the 15-site complex, bad maintenance data is not a bookkeeping problem. It is a direct way to inflate cleanup costs, slow decisions and keep risky assets in service longer than they should be.