This is a reminder that the email address for the Exchange Network Help Desk has changed to [email protected]. U.S. EPA first announced this change in the Spring of 2025 to comply with Federal requirements around the use of .gov domains (M-23-10 DOTGOV Act Guidance). 

The prior Help Desk email address will not be supported after May 31, 2026. If you have not already done so, please update your address books now to reflect the new address so you do not experience any difficulties getting assistance. 

The Exchange Network Help Desk is available for EN partners Monday-Friday from 8:00AM-6:00PM ET at: [email protected] or 1-(888)-890-1995.

The Exchange Network (EN) Grant Program indicated in its published FY25 Solicitation Notice (SN) that selection decisions for the FY25 competition would be finalized and announced in January of 2026. Due to staff reassignments and a high number of received proposals, selection decisions are delayed past the published target date. The program now anticipates final decisions will be made in late February or early March 2026.

Notifications to applicants will be sent by the EN grants team to the original signer of the application or the project contact listed in the application. Please note that notifications sent to successful applicants are not authorizations to begin work. The official notification of an award will be made by EPA’s Office of the Chief Grants Officer (OCGO). Selection does not guarantee an award will be made. Statutory authorization, funding, or other issues during the award process may affect the ability of the EPA to make an award.
 
The official award notice, as signed and sent by an EPA grants officer, is the authorizing document and will be provided through electronic or postal mail following the finalization of award processing. Successful applicants may need to prepare and submit additional documents and forms, which must be approved by the EPA, before the grant can officially be awarded. The time between notification of selection and award of a grant can take up to 90 days or longer.
 
For more information, please contact:
Erin McGown
EN Grants Program Manager
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Email: [email protected]

If you administer your organization’s Exchange Network Node, please be advised that U.S. EPA’s Central Data Exchange is making two changes to several Exchange Network services during the week of February 16. The CDX team anticipates that most EN partners will not be impacted by these changes, but please see the details below to determine if your agency’s Node may be affected. 
 
Change 1: Updated Security Certificates
Starting the week of February 16, 2026, certificates offered by CDX will begin the transition to an alternate Certificate Chain:

• Intermediate certificate: Sectigo RSA Domain Validation Secure Server CA
• Root certificate: USERTrust RSA Certification Authority (Friendly Name: Sectigo)

After this change, organizations that use default certificate stores without certificate pinning will not notice any difference in communication or behavior for CDX or applications that interact with CDX except that the new certificate authority will be present when inspecting site security. Most or all CDX partners and users will fall into this category; for those users, no action is needed.

Any organizations that use certificate pinning should be able to download the new root and intermediate certificate bundle from the links above ahead of this change.  We expect that this change will complete before March 11, 2026.  For best compatibility, it is recommended that organizations use both the new and existing certificate chains until that date.

Change 2: Updated IP Addresses

U.S. EPA will also be making a change to the IP address for several services run by EPA’s Central Data Exchange (CDX). This change will impact the following hostnames on February 20:  
cdx.epa.gov
cdxnodenaas.epa.gov
cdxnodengn.epa.gov
cdxtools.epa.gov
encromerr.epa.gov
ves.epa.gov
cdxapi.epa.gov
cdxnode2.epa.gov
ends2.epa.gov
enservices.epa.gov

The new IP address for these services will be 204.47.253.8. EPA expects this change to be transparent to all users except for organizations who use firewall rules to restrict outbound traffic in server environments. Administrators in those environments should be aware that firewall rules will need to be implemented at the nearest opportunity allowing the new IP address (204.47.253.8) to avoid service disruptions.

For more information or answers to questions, please contact the Exchange Network Help Desk at 1-(888)-890-1995 or [email protected].

Due to a last-minute schedule conflict, we have to postpone the February Exchange Network Forum, which was originally slated for 1:00 Eastern today. Join us next month to learn more about the Integrated Compliance Information System (ICIS) modernization effort. Please message Alex O’Neill ([email protected]) at U.S. EPA with any questions.