Where every entry comes from, and what it can and cannot tell you

The source: U.S. EPA ECHO

ECHO (Enforcement and Compliance History Online) is U.S. EPA’s public database of inspections, violations, enforcement actions and penalties for facilities regulated under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the hazardous-waste law (RCRA) and the Safe Drinking Water Act. It includes work done by U.S. EPA and by state and local agencies (in this area, Ohio EPA and the local air agencies it works with). EPA says its data “are typically refreshed on a weekly schedule”. EPA: About the data

Once a day this site asks ECHO’s public web service for every active facility it lists in Cuyahoga County and in Summit County, Ohio (no key, no scraping of EPA web pages). EPA: ECHO web services

How a read becomes an entry

For each facility, ECHO’s facility search (the web service this site reads) gives the date of the most recent inspection, informal action and formal action (each split between U.S. EPA and the state or local agency), the most recent penalty and its amount, and the facility’s current compliance status. ECHO itself keeps each facility’s full history; EPA’s report on each facility shows it. This site compares each read with the one before:

• a newer date than we held becomes an entry of that kind, dated with EPA’s date;
• a changed compliance status becomes a “status change” entry dated the day we saw it;
• on the very first read of each county, the most recent dates that fell in the previous 12 months became the starting entries; a facility that first appears later starts with its last 30 days;
• a facility ECHO no longer lists as active leaves the “in violation now” lists and the counts after the next good read of its county. Its entries and its page stay, marked as no longer active. If one read would drop more than a tenth of a county’s facilities at once (and more than 25), nothing is dropped that day: that looks like a problem with EPA’s answer, not news.

Nothing is written by hand and nothing is written by AI. A county is skipped for the day, and nothing is changed, when EPA’s answer fails or is much smaller than the day before.

What the entries mean

Inspection

An inspector visited or evaluated the facility. An inspection by itself is not a finding of a violation.

Informal action

A notice of violation, warning letter or similar notice that asks the facility to return to compliance.

Formal action

An enforceable order, consent agreement, judicial case or similar formal enforcement step.

Penalty

A penalty EPA records against the facility, with the amount EPA lists.

Status change

The facility's overall compliance status in ECHO changed between two of our daily reads.

Significant Violation

ECHO’s most serious status: the facility is on a program’s priority list, such as a Clean Air Act high priority violation or Clean Water Act or RCRA significant noncompliance.

Violation Identified

At least one program shows a violation for the facility in the current quarter.

Quarters in noncompliance

How many of the last 12 quarters (three years) ECHO counts the facility as out of compliance in any program.

Limits, plainly

• An entry is not a verdict. An inspection is not a finding of a violation, and EPA notes that many minor violations are corrected without formal action. EPA does not show enforcement cases that are not yet concluded.
• Only the latest of each kind. Because ECHO’s facility search gives only the most recent date of each kind per facility, two inspections between our reads would appear as one entry, and history before this site began is not complete. EPA’s report for each facility has the full list.
• EPA can be wrong. ECHO carries the data agencies enter, including mistakes. EPA keeps a list of known data problems. A facility (or anyone) can report an error with the “Report Data Error” button at the top of EPA’s Detailed Facility Report; EPA routes the report to the appropriate data steward (EPA’s instructions). Corrections reach this site on the next read.
• Places are mailing addresses. The city shown is the one in the facility’s EPA address.

Reads so far