EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) website contains State Comparative Maps and Dashboards that portray information about enforcement and compliance from the Clean Air Act Air Facility System (AFS), the Clean Water Act National Pollution Discharge Elimination System database (Integrated Compliance Information System or ICIS-NPDES), and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act national database (RCRAInfo). The Data Verification deadline for states to make data corrections in these three EPA national systems before the data will be frozen for FY2012 will be extended from February 26 to March 14, 2013. The data freeze is done for purposes of state oversight (State Review Framework project) and transparency (ECHO website).
We have heard from many states that additional time to make corrections would be beneficial. Our recent release of the State Comparative Maps and Dashboards has made it easier to spot issues. We understand that states are making a big effort to ensure the information is correct, and we want to make sure that our frozen data set is of the highest possible quality.
We have also received many last-minute questions and comments from the states regarding individual data elements and data values. Some issues reported to us were discrepancies related to time lags associated with the source database and our ECHO data mart (which has been refreshed on a bi-weekly schedule). Other issues related to specific state data flow problems (e.g., states finalizing items relating to their ICIS-NPDES migration, using the wrong fields or codes) that required changes in the state data submitted to EPA.
Some issues required us to update and correct SRF programming logic. Most of these logic changes were relatively minor, and were done incrementally as the problems were reported. We have been updating the SRF Data Verification site with the dates and nature of these updates. However, there are four recent changes that will take effect this week (all CWA related) that will result in updated data for many states. Because the states have not yet seen this updated data, our new March 14 deadline will provide a short window of additional review. While these changes relate to CWA only, we are going to extend the freeze date for all three media.
Next Steps and Specifics
We are going ahead with our data pull scheduled for February 26; however, this will not be the final data pull used for the FY2012 frozen data. Our data extract will become available for use in the SRF Data Verification website and State Dashboards on February 28. Changes that impact metrics shown in the State Comparative Maps will begin showing on March 1. To ensure that any last changes needed in the state data are in the source system for our final freeze, please be sure that database changes are made by Midnight, ET on March 14. We will compile the data over the weekend of the 16th so that information is available on March 18.
Thanks for the continuing efforts to ensure that the frozen data is of the highest quality possible.
Lisa Lund
Director, Office of Compliance
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
202.564.2280
lund.lisa [at] epa.gov