ECHO Comments Archive

"This comment is in reference to all media - "Quarters in NC" is a poor indicator of actual compliance. It does not matter if there was only one non-compliance item reported on a annual report or 100; the public will see 4 quarters of non-compliance! This obviously is not a good metric!"
"In general I believe the inspection dbase is incomplete and somewhat inaccurate."
- Regulated entity user

"I am a student from New Hampshire currently living in Iceland. An environmental policy professor here suggested that I peruse this site and comment during this pilot phase. I checked out the search using my state, county, hometown, and zip code in a couple of combinations.
I am generally ignorant of what statutes govern companies operating even around my hometown, and have never known a way of readily determining whether those companies engaged in environmentally sound practices. However, simply running a couple of searches helped to clarify the site's usefulness for me as a private citizen:
I have not ever been afraid of any significant environmental violations near my hometown, yet I found it comforting that the search results indicated that facilities less than a mile from my house were without significant violations in the last two years. Moreover, while I have only rarely attended or participated in public meetings of the Board of Aldermen in my hometown, I now feel that ECHO could provide a good starting point for me to take a more active interest in my town's environmental policies.
I am still not entirely sure why demographic information has been included on this site. I will try to read further, however. Also, I would be interested in finding out what other sources of this sort are available to the public. Were it not for that professor, I would not even have known to check this one."
- Unaffiliated user

"Three weeks ago, [xxx] submitted corrections for a series of errors observed for [xxx]. ECHO incorrectly indicates that [xxx] has been in violation of the Title V permit for the past five quarters and has High Priority Violations flagged for 6 quarters. Today, [xxx] received an e-mail stating that EPA cannot correct the data because it is coming out of the state's system. Coincidentally [xxx] personnel met yesterday to discuss air activities and the DEP has no major issues with any activities currently going on at the plant. I have been in contact with state personnel but I do not have any answers yet. I sincerely hope that we don't end up with the EPA pointing to the state and the state pointing back at the EPA while these inappropriate violations languish in cyberspace for the world to see."
- Regulated entity user

"KeySpan is the largest investor owned electric generator in New York State, with over 6200 MW of generating capacity serving New York City and Long Island. KeySpan is also one of the largest natural gas distribution companies in the northeast, with facilities in New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island.
After review of the ECHO web site, KeySpan does not agree that the web site currently provides meaningful and useful information concerning site compliance and enforcement. Much of the compliance data presented is questionable in its accuracy and completeness. Often non-compliances are noted even though the matter was resolved or the issue is under a consent order. There are often occurrences where multiple names for the same facility has appeared. In this situation an error report was filed but changes could only be made in the Facility Registry System (FRS) and not the other systems. Many of these other systems are administered by the state authority and are beyond the scope of the error reporting function. A system with the design goals of ECHO requires a robust and integrated system. The fact that the various data systems do not seem to be up to date is evidence that there is not full integration as yet.
The question of the value of the information must also be addressed. Compliance with federal and state programs is complex and cannot readily be distilled down to simple terms. This is evidenced by the nearly twenty page long data dictionary required to define terms and programs. The web site presents information that may be beyond the ability of the stakeholder to use in a meaningful way. The presentation is often not consistent from one facility to the next, making comparisons difficult. There is also no consistency regarding terms like 'significant' when addressing non-compliances, again making it difficult to make informed judgements about regulatory compliance.
Finally, KeySpan, being a Brooklyn, New York based company, is well aware of the current security climate and has gone to great lengths to increase security at our facilities. It is troublesome that the ECHO web site provides instant access to latitude, longitude and demographic data regarding the facility and surrounding communities. The map feature provides detailed information on the location of the facility and its proximity to local street and highways and other types of facilities. This appears contrary and inconsistent with efforts to preserve homeland security. Access to sensitive information should be revisited and EPA should be consistent with other federal agencies on what information is deemed sensitive for the purposes of protecting homeland security."
- Regulated entity user

"Comment: Find a different way other than % to indicate amount by which a violation exceeds permit limits for parameters which have an underlying non-normal statistical distribution. This includes pH, bacteria (limit is geometric mean), and toxicity. A % exceedance is meaningless for such parameters (unless you can figure out how to show the calculation)."
- Regulated entity user

"This is a very usefull teaching tool. The data presented makes "real" the issues related to production and the enviornment.
Thanks very much for letting us use it!"
- Academic user

"The Rohm and Haas Company would like to provide the following comments on the EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. Rohm and Haas also adopts and incorporates the comments submitted by The American Chemistry Council on this matter. ACC has expressed our general concerns in their comment letter dated March 28, 2003 and in an effort not to be duplicative, we are providing additional comments based on the specific information requested by EPA in the Federal Register Notice.

(1) Does the site provide meaningful and useful information about the compliance and enforcement program?
We support the public availability of compliance and enforcement data; however, this information must be accurate and easily understood. We find that review of our own data in many cases was substantially confusing in that in it cannot be traced to specific occurrences and does not correspond to information possessed by the facility. Neither the public nor the facility has means to verify the accuracy of these entries and facilities may suffer damage to reputation for either correct or incorrect data that cannot be verified. Additionally, the entry of the same enforcement action on duplicative tables may convey the incorrect impression that the facility received multiple, similar, enforcement actions. This approach to data presentation is potentially misleading and damaging to facility reputation.
Overall, the timing of postings and the "anchor dates" for postings and actions is worrisome. The approach taken seems to convey that the facility is in continual violation from the date of a violation through the actual date of enforcement by the agency whether this is factual or not; the facility is thus publicly held accountable for the agency's administrative enforcement delays. In our case, these delays have amounted to years to issue Title V permits or NPDES permits, for example. Greater detail is needed to more fully explain the data. We would like to suggest that the facility be provided a field to attach comments. Also that only the facility/company can provide comments on the data or request correction of the data.
Additionally, since data is updated monthly and it is obvious to us that there are many errors with our data, we will have to routinely review our data in the ECHO database to ensure the data is accurate and errors are corrected. We ask that EPA consider that this could be a large effort for our facilities when data is confusing or can not be traced. Therefore, we suggest semiannual updates would be sufficiently current and less resource intensive for both the Agency and the facilities.

(2) Is the site easy to navigate?
In general yes but in some cases, our facilities were unable to get their facility information even by simple zip code searches. It is our conclusion that the database is inconsistent.

(3) Does the help text adequately explain the data?
The acronyms used were misleading and confusing for most facilities. The presentation of the data was also difficult for many facilities due to multiple listings or outdated information. The source of the data should also be identified, so that a facility can correct any misinformation in all relevant databases. It would also be helpful if a glossary of terms was provided.

(4) What additional features, content, and/or modifications would improve the site?
We are not providing any additional suggestions for improvement. We feel the ACC comment letter makes sufficient recommendations for improvement. Our compliance history is extremely important to us and we encourage EPA to make modifications that would help us to be more active in correcting misinformation and preserving our reputation where appropriate.

(5) For members of the regulated community:
A. Were your facility reports accurate?
We have found many instances where our information was inaccurate, misleading or simply wrong. From review of the data for our facilities, we have found numerous examples of the following errors:
· Wrong SIC codes and general information about our facilities such as contact names, phone numbers, and mailing addresses. Information for closed facilities still appears in the database. There is no indication that the facility no longer exists.
· Several distinct but contiguous facilities consolidated as if they were a single facility.
· Resolved non compliances were not corrected in the database.
· NOVs or non compliances that we have successfully challenged were not removed from the database.
· Non compliances or violations were indicated where we had none.
· The timeframes of a non compliance or violation were wrong (i.e., the database has that one of our facilities is out of compliance for 8 quarters when it was 2 quarters.)
· There are occasions when we know we had permit exceedances but none were present in the database.
· Numerous regulatory inspections that were conducted at our facilities but are not listed in the database. (In one particular case, the database shows the last air inspection for one of our facilities was in 1995. However, we are routinely inspected annually.)
· The database shows numerous late DMRs when we have confirmed that they were not submitted late.
· Permit limits for some parameters are shown when none exist in our permits.
· Wrong permit, RCRA, or ID numbers (In one case, the database lists a RCRA ID number for one of our facilities that never existed [in our name- What does this mean? Lists us under a prior site owners RCRA ID?].)
· Facilities with the wrong RCRA classification (i.e., the facility is listed as a SQG when they area CESQG).
· Closed permits were never recorded and appear to still be active (i.e., Part B permits, BIF permits).
· Enforcement actions and penalties posted to the wrong dates (in some cases, not even the same year of the violation).
· Facilities deemed High Priority Violators where it is not the case (In one case we have a letter from our state that this did not occur).
· We have found instances of duplicative information such as an NOV and subsequent enforcement action shown as separate non compliances.
In general, it is our impression that the data for "simpler" facilities (those facilities without NPDES or air permits) were mostly accurate. Data for complex facilities (facilities with multiple permits) were riddled with errors.

B. If you did need to submit an online error report, was the error reporting process easy to use?
In general yes it is easy to submit the corrections. Our concern is with the timeliness in getting the corrections posted to the database. We would like to have the ability to place comments directly into the database and to have the ability to track corrections to ensure they are made in a timely fashion.
Rohm and Haas appreciates this opportunity to comment and we hope that this information will help to make the ECHO database a more accurate database and more reflective of our true compliance history."
- Regulated entity user

"Thank you for this opportunity to comment on the ECHO pilot program. In general, we support the online availability of accurate and informative environmental data. Unfortunately, we have found incorrect data reported online for each one of the facilities we operate. The online reporting of inaccurate data without verification and without supporting information seems to unfairly portray participating facilities negatively even though many facilities are actively complying with complex environmental regulations. In our review of the ECHO user comments, we have found that the general public believes that this site provides good information that will allow residents within their communities and the consumer to make better-educated decisions regarding where they want to live and which companies to support. In light of the fact that the ‘unaffiliated user' is basing quality of life decisions on information contained within the ECHO database and to prevent the serious consequences of distributing incorrect information, we encourage the U.S. EPA to confirm the validity of the data with facility owners/operators by setting an appropriate offline review period before posting this information on the web.

Specifically we would like to offer the following recommendations to improve the utility and accuracy of the ECHO reports: a) to identify violations - a status indicator of compliance/non-compliance is preferable to reporting violations in terms of highest percentages, and b) to clarify the severity of a permit violation by providing supporting data, when available, which identifies both frequency and duration of the violation. An example of when the additional supporting data would provide a clearer picture of a facility's compliance history would involve a reportable violation resulting from a data spike of a particular constituent for a few minutes or seconds even though a facility may be in compliance for rest of the month or quarter.

Information required by implementing the above recommendation may be provided in the offline response period from each of the facility owners/operators for each reportable violation or reported non-compliance."
- Regulated entity user

"Flint Hills Resources, LP (FHR) is pleased to submit the following comments and recommendations pertaining to EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) Web Site. FHR owns and operates two petroleum refineries in Corpus Christi, Texas, one refinery in Pine Bend, Minnesota, and two other petroleum product terminals that are included within the ECHO reporting database.
FHR supports the public reporting of environmental performance information. Since March 2000, FHR's Pine Bend Refinery, in conjunction with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, has voluntarily maintained a web site providing clear, validated environmental data to the public (see http://www.fhrpinebend.com). Although EPA is similarly attempting to provide environmental data directly to the public, FHR finds the posted data to be unreliable and difficult to correct. The following sections provide more detailed comments and some recommended improvements.

ECHO Reports Are Unreliable
FHR spent considerable time reviewing the information displayed on the ECHO web site for FHR's four owned and operated facilities. During this review, FHR discovered over 140 errors ranging from simple typographical errors to inaccurate information related to compliance status and enforcement actions, as follows:
Permits and Facility Identifiers - Several incorrect facility names and addresses were found. Also, permits or RCRA generator numbers for non-FHR facilities were incorrectly assigned to FHR.
Inspection History – Historical state or county environmental inspections are not always listed.
Compliance Data and Status - Compliance information, which is perhaps the most important data for facility operators, is confusing and misleading. Some facilities are shown to have erroneous areas of significant non-compliance, which are unknown to facility personnel. In addition, when a facility enters a consent agreement to resolve a compliance concern, the facility's status remains non-compliant, even if the facility is complying with an agency compliance agreement. Lastly, the abbreviations used to describe compliance status are difficult to comprehend.
Enforcement Information - In some cases, joint-enforcement actions by both EPA and state authorities are doubled accounted. Also, total penalties, paid by a corporation for an enforcement action involving more than one facility, are displayed on each facility report. Displaying the information in this manner may cause citizens to infer that the same penalty was paid multiple times.

Correction Process Needs Improvement
Since November 2002, FHR has filed over 140 on-line ECHO error reports. Although many errors have been resolved, several errors remain uncorrected. In addition, some data cannot be corrected using the on-line error reporting. Some error reports forwarded by EPA to state agencies for correction have not been acted upon in over 3 months. EPA should take full ownership to data quality and ensure that corrections are made in a timely manner.
FHR also suggests that EPA consider providing facilities with an opportunity to validate compliance and enforcement data, prior to posting on the ECHO web site. EPA currently provides a similar validation process for Toxic Chemical Release Inventory (TRI) data, whereby facilities are provided a limited timeframe to review and submit corrections, prior to public release.

ECHO Report Should Be Simplified
As previously stated, some of the information within the Compliance Status section of the ECHO facility report is unclear. FHR believes that the public is most interested in whether a facility is operating in compliance, and if not, is the facility on an agency-approved schedule for correction. The ECHO information would be more meaningful, if EPA simplified the Two Year Air Compliance Status by Quarter abbreviations to only: C (compliance), V (violation), and S (compliance schedule). All other abbreviations and extensions provide an opportunity for higher complexity and an opportunity for misunderstanding."
- Regulated entity user

"...I also request the web site be removed from public view until KNOWN errors, such as this one, can be correct. Please do not close this request until my concerns are addressed. Having inaccurate negative information about my operation being published by EPA is of high concern to me."
- Regulated entity user

"There appears to be a lot of abbreviations and acronyms used on the forms. This is not very user friendly to the general public. I am employed in the environmental field and looked up one of my own facilities. I was unable to understand what was being meant or said in some of the information provided. In other words, "What does it mean to me?" I recommend having a review of the format and information provided conducted by random John Q. Public type of individuals, not just those familiar with environmental jargon and materials."
- State government user

"The method of listing violations and current significant violations is misleading. There is no explanation regarding current NOVs that are being contested. The term significant is also misleading and would cause an uniformed person to reach the wrong conclusions. Our particular situation involves isolated minor violations that did not represent any hazard to the public. These are currently being contested. Until an issue is resolved it should not be listed as a violation."
- Regulated entity user

"Being from the regulated community, we see having accurate compliance information available to the public as positive. The comments we are submitting regarding ECHO revolve around the measurement of the "number of quarters in non-compliance". The dates of inspections are shown, however someone looking at the Number of quarters in noncompliance may be mislead.
For example, if an inspection is conducted at the beginning of a quarter, January 2nd, and through correspondance is resolved by the end of the quarter, March 31; that indicates only 1 quarter in noncompliance. However the same inspection could take place on the last day of the quarter and after the same amount of days get resolved at the beginning of the 3 quarter, indicating 3 quarters in noncompliance. Someone from the public would interpret one being much worse than the other. Just supplying the date of the inspection and the back in compliance date should be adequate without indicating the number of quarters.
Also there is no distinction made between someone having a certain number of quarters in noncompliance for a minor issue, such as a missing valve tag, as opposed to a major issue. It may not be feasible to list actual violations, but it may be a more even measurement to report only those violations which were referred to enforcement or resulted in fines.
There is an enormous amount of data to report and it should be as simple to understand as possible. Although reporting numbers of quarters in noncompliance would seem to measure companies evenly, it may actually cause confusion as to the real compliance history of a company."
- Regulated entity user

"I am responding to your request for comments of the, Enforcement and Compliance History Online, or "ECHO" database on behalf of the City of Chicago, Department of Environment. DOE has looked at your database, and is concerned that it may not provide information on all state funded inspections. The Chicago DOE works under a delegation agreement with the state of Illinois. That agreement has certain reporting requirements, and all of our permitted facility inspections with regards to air emitters are reported to the Illinois EPA.

The database supposedly lists all of the, "hazardous waste-related facilities" in a state, listed by several categories. All USEPA, state, and local inspections of these sites are supposedly listed, inferring by the listing that all institutionalized sources of pollution are included.

The maximum number of businesses that the site will allow someone to bring up at once is 500. Since Chicago has, according to the site, 1,038 listings, we therefore have to break the listing down into segments. We recommend that this be changed so that users can view up to 2,000 sites. The next largest grouping is by Zip Code. To compare actual site information with the ECHO database, we have looked at a couple of sites that we are very familiar with, and called up one Zip Code, to examine the information in depth. I have the following comments to offer as examples: (ALL LOCATIONS ARE IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS) [xxx]

4. Not only are the local inspections not included in the ECHO database, but as far as we can determine, in most cases, state inspections are not included either, since we have worked in conjunction with the Illinois EPA on all of these three sites, and their inspections are not included either.

Conclusion: While the ECHO database seems to include USEPA information as well as some state information, it lacks most local information, even if that information has been reported to the state. Therefore, since the majority of the inspections are done on a local level, we think the database lacks relevant inspection information. This limits its usefulness for certain tasks, one example of which would be assessing environmental justice issues."
- Local government user

"TFollowing are the comments of Xcel Energy regarding the U.S Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Notice of Availability of Enforcement and Compliance History Online Web Site and Request For Comments (67 Fed. Reg., 70079, Nov. 20, 2002).
Xcel Energy is an electricity and natural gas utility formed by the merger of Northern States Power Company (Minneapolis, MN) and New Century Energies (Denver, CO). Xcel Energy's regulated operations generate approximately 15,000 megawatts and serve 3 million electricity customers in 12 Western and Midwestern states. As an electric and gas utility, Xcel Energy has innumerable facilities regulated under the CAA, CWA-NPDES, RCRA, SARA, and CERCLA. As such, we have a significant interest in the accuracy of the data presented in EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online Database. Inaccurate information and misinterpretation of the data will significantly detract from the usefulness of this tool.

It is very difficult to get a complete record of facility information from the database. If a search is conducted on "All Media", you would assume that you would get all of the CAA, CWA, EPCRA, and RCRA information associated with the facility, however this is not necessarily the case. Often, a search may need to be conducted independently on each media to ensure that all available information is extracted from the database for a specific facility.

The search function of the ECHO database is somewhat cumbersome. In order to find all of the facilities owned and operated by our company, the search had to be conducted on multiple variations of the company name to find all applicable entries. Each search would yield a different listing of facilities. Some never showed up at all, until the search was performed using the facility's RCRA ID number. It would be advantageous for EPA to develop a standard method for naming facilities or link facilities to a common identifier such as a Dun & Bradstreet number of the parent company to facilitate the search function. We identified several hundred of our company's facilities in the database, but have no way of knowing whether we've found all of them.

We have identified several facilities that have CAA permits, but for unknown reasons, do not show up in the ECHO database.

The "Facility Characteristics" contain inconsistent latitude and longitude coordinates. EPA may want to consider verifying and standardizing this data.

The "Two Year Compliance Status by Quarter" table design could be misleading to the general public. Problems could be with the state SIP and not the individual facility. These problems could mislead the public into thinking the facility is in violation when it is actually in compliance.

ECHO lists every facility that has ever been assigned an EPA hazardous waste generator ID number. As a result, facilities no longer existing, as well as remediation sites that have been closed still show up on the list. In many cases, inactivation requests were submitted to the EPA for these sites. It is recommended that EPA either eliminate inactivated sites from the ECHO database, or provide an "inactive" indicator for sites that no longer exist or are closed.

Several inaccuracies were noted in the data including; erroneous indications of late reports, erroneous indications of noncompliance, and erroneous indications of compliance."
- Regulated entity user

"This site is very helpful for citizens trying to help achieve enforcement of environmental laws. Please make it permanent!"
- Public interest group user

"I think the ECHO concept is excellent and have used it once before to review a particular generator. This time I had difficulty getting any search pages to work. I think it should be a permament feature as it allows easy access (usually) to important compliance information and assists generators of hazardous waste to choose reliable vendors."
- Commercial user

Phoned Comments

I'm not sure what the source codes referred to. It is hard to tell if permit information is correct when actual permit numbers are not used on the site.
- Regulated entity user