More than one-third of the remediation projects declared complete by the Department of Defense may in fact require additional remedial action, according to a recent General Accounting Office (GAO) report.

The GAO found that the Army Corps of Engineers did not have a sound basis for declaring that 1,468 (38 percent) of 3,840 formerly used defense sites (FUDS) require no further study or action.

For many of the sites, GAO said, there was no evidence that the Corps undertook a systematic search for the presence of any hazards.