Member Pipeline - Regulatory - Alert (RA 04-09)
To: Members & Affiliates
From: National Office
Date: April 22, 2004
Subject: ERRORS IN EPA’S ENFORCEMENT COMPLIANCE DATABASE RESURFACE
Reference: RA 04-09
Printer friendly versionIn light of reports of errors contained in a recent U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) publication, entitled Troubled Waters: An Analysis of Clean Water Act Compliance, January 2002 - June 2003, the Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies (AMSA) once again urges members to review their facilities’ records found both in the report, and more importantly, in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA or the Agency), Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database (http://www.epa.gov/echo/). The database, from which PIRG obtained its compliance data, gives the public and industry direct access to the environmental compliance records of more than 800,000 regulated entities nationwide, including water and wastewater treatment facilities (67 Fed. Reg. 70079). On March 31, 2003, AMSA commented to EPA, criticizing ECHO’s data accuracy and often poor error correction process (http://www.amsa-cleanwater.org/private/legreg/outreach/03-31-03ECHOComments.pdf). AMSA again urges members to review their compliance data in ECHO.
Errors in ECHO Can Damage Public Agency Reputation,
Credibility
Several AMSA members informed the Association that the recent
PIRG report (http://uspirg.org/uspirg.asp?id2=12718&id3=USPIRG)
erroneously listed violations based on inaccurate ECHO information. One member
informed AMSA that the PIRG report listed some 15 National Pollutant Discharge
Elimination System (NPDES) permit violations for their facilities because of
false compliance information in EPA’s ECHO database. Publications of this sort
can damage the reputation and credibility of your public agency. Therefore, AMSA
strongly urges its members to check the accuracy of the ECHO data posted for
their facilities and correct it as soon as possible if necessary.
Several members have contacted PIRG directly, and in at least one instance, AMSA has learned that PIRG sent an apology letter to the member agency and agreed to correct the faulty information immediately. EPA has also set up a website for facilities to report errors in, or to file complaints about, ECHO at http://www.epa.gov/compliance/complaints_echo.html. Several members have indicated frustration with the often slow and time-consuming error correction process; nevertheless, AMSA encourages its members to take advantage of the opportunity to attempt to correct errors and avoid the potential misinformation that could result should these errors remain uncorrected.
AMSA requests that if a member agency finds errors in the ECHO database or has difficulty correcting these errors, contact AMSA’s Will Pettit at 202/833-3280 or wpettit@amsa-cleanwater.org. AMSA will continue to urge EPA to speed up the error correction process or, alternatively, to prohibit public access to ECHO until this process is improved.