Nonpoint Source Water Pollution: Greater Oversight and Additional Data Needed for Key EPA Water Program, Survey of Section 319 Project Managers (GAO-12-377SP, May 2012), an E-supplement to GAO-12-335

Background

This e-supplement is a companion to our report titled, "NONPOINT SOURCE WATER POLLUTION: Greater Oversight and Additional Data Needed for Key EPA Water Program, GAO-12-335." The purpose of this e-supplement is to provide information from a web-based survey of section 319 project managers.

The purpose of the survey was to gather information on topics such as project proposal and selection, project implementation, challenges associated with the project, monitoring and oversight, and funding sources. This information was used primarily to help assess states' implementation of their nonpoint source water pollution management programs. We selected a simple random sample from EPA's Grants Reporting and Tracking System (GRTS) out of a universe of 1,584 projects. We selected projects that received section 319 funding, were completed between January 1, 2004, and June 9, 2011, and involved implementing conservation practices or remediation techniques rather than, for example, projects that primarily focused on planning or monitoring. After drawing the initial sample, we removed duplicates and excluded projects that we learned were statewide. We also excluded projects from North Dakota and South Dakota due to some incomplete or uninitiated projects being listed as complete in EPA's GRTS. After obtaining contact information for the sampled projects, we also excluded those projects for which there was no longer an official available who was knowledgeable about the selected project. After these adjustments, we estimated that the total number of projects in GRTS that met these criteria was about 1,273. For those project managers who had more than two projects sampled, we randomly selected two projects for the survey in order to reduce respondent burden. The final number of projects in the sample was 524. We received a total of 298 responses that accounted for an overall unweighted response rate of 57 percent. The results of our survey are generalizable to the population of section 319 projects that meet these criteria and are presented with their 95 percent confidence intervals. We administered the survey between September 2011 and November 2011. See our full report (GAO-12-335) for a more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology.

Survey results in this e-publication are presented in aggregate form so that no individual project manager's responses can be identified. We intentionally did not provide responses for those questions that were difficult to summarize or would have identified respondents. We conducted this performance audit from December 2010 through May 2012, in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

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