With issuance of the June 29, 2020, memorandum by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) indicating that the temporary policy
regarding EPA's exercise of enforcement discretion during the
COVID-19 public health emergency will end on Aug. 31, it is a good
time to review compliance status using important online tools, some
of which have been enhanced recently.
The EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO)
database is a good place to start. The website is updated
frequently based on EPA priorities and requests by stakeholders.
One of the recent tools added is the ability to search for facilities that failed to file
discharge monitoring reports (DMRs) under the National Pollutant
Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Clean Water Act Program. This
search tool offers improved ability to filter and sort results,
including limiting search results to particular types of
non-receipt statuses and date ranges. For example, simply by
clicking a single box, one
