The federal facility environmental restoration challenge is enormous. The environmental legacy of the federal government's mission-oriented activities is felt in communities throughout the country. Environmental clean-up of the 24,000 sites on federal facilities in the United States may ultimately cost as much as $400 billion and will extend well into the next century. Equally challenging is the process by which federal facility clean-up decisions are made. The Federal Facilities Environmental Restoration (FFER) Dialogue Committee, which includes forty representatives of federal agencies, tribal and state governments and associations, and local and national environmental, community, and labor organizations, was established by EPA to develop consensus policy recommendations aimed at improving the FFER decision-making process to ensure that clean-up decisions reflect the priorities and concerns of all stakeholders.