Most of the ground water associated with hazardous waste sites is contaminated. The National Research Council recently concluded in its report, Alternatives for Ground Water Cleanup, that the best available technology is inadequate for remediation of most contaminated aquifers. The critical shortage of proven cleanup technologies can be traced directly to:

1. lack of marketplace incentives to spur development of more effective technology
2. inadequate federal funding for subsurface research
3. a demonstrable gap or disconnect between research and the demonstration and commercialization of new environmental remediation technologies.

Lack of marketplace incentives and federal research support will continue to be serious problems for the foreseeable future; however, several new initiatives for quantitative demonstrations of innovative technology are expected to yield some short-term benefits. The current status of bioremediation technologies for ground water cleanup will be reviewed to provide a basis for forecasting needs for future development.

End_of_Record - Last_Page 9---------------