Member Pipeline - Regulatory - Alert (RA 03-04)
To: Members & Affiliates
From: National Office
Date: March 6, 2003
Subject: EPA’S PILOT ONLINE ENFORCEMENT COMPLIANCE DATABASE
Reference: RA 03-04
Action Please By:
March 21, 2003
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is accepting comments on a public information tool called Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO), which gives the public and industry direct access to the environmental compliance records of more than 800,000 regulated entities nationwide, including water and wastewater facilities (67 Fed. Reg. 70079). The ECHO database is located on the Agency’s web site at http://www.epa.gov/echo. Currently ECHO is in the pilot phase, but is publicly accessible and provides detailed facility reports including federal and state compliance inspections, environmental violations, recent formal enforcement actions, and demographic profiles of surrounding areas. All of the information on ECHO previously was available to the public in other databases, such as EPA’s permit compliance system. The data on ECHO is limited to compliance with air, water, and the Resource Conservation Recovery Act regulations. Presently, ECHO contains a two year compliance history for each facility. EPA plans to expand ECHO to five years.
The Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies (AMSA) urges its members to check the accuracy of the ECHO data posted for their facilities. Numerous AMSA members have already alerted the National Office to errors contained in ECHO. EPA has set up a web site for facilities to report errors or to file complaints at http://www.epa.gov/compliance/complaints_echo.html. AMSA encourages its members to take advantage of this opportunity for error correction.
EPA is seeking comments on the ECHO’s content, design, and data accuracy. On January 30, 2003, EPA extended the comment deadline to March 31, 2003 (68 Fed. Reg. 4777). AMSA will file comments on ECHO prior to the deadline to address several concerns. Members are invited to submit comments to AMSA on the following issues by March 21, 2003:
-
In general, are the compliance histories of your facilities and other information in ECHO accurate?
-
Are you concerned that the inclusion of demographic information puts an environmental justice overlay to the data, which may lead ECHO users to infer relationships between the compliance records of facilities and their health and economic situations?
-
Do you believe ECHO should contain guidance to users on what the compliance data actually means?
-
Are you concerned that where federal and state enforcement compliance data conflict, the federal data will prevail in ECHO?
-
Are you concerned that the enforcement penalties listed in ECHO are in the amounts sought by EPA, as opposed to actual obtained amounts?
Please submit comments on these, or any other issues, to Will Pettit, AMSA, at 202/833-3280 or wpettit@amsa-cleanwater.org.