The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the release of a new mapping feature in EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database.
As part of EPA’s ongoing effort to improve transparency, the EPA and State Enforcement Actions Map will allow the public to access federal and state enforcement information in an interactive format and to compare enforcement action information by state.
The map will be refreshed monthly to include up-to-date information about the enforcement actions taken to address violations of air, water and waste laws.
“EPA is committed to providing the public with easy-to-use tools that display facility compliance information and the actions EPA and the states are taking to address pollution problems in communities across the nation,” EPA Assistant Administrator Cynthia Giles said. “EPA is proud to announce our latest effort under the White House Regulatory Compliance Transparency Initiative, and we will continue to take steps to make meaningful enforcement and compliance data available as part of an open, transparent government.”
Map users can choose the year, the media and whether they would like to display enforcement information for actions taken at the federal level, state level or both. Users can then click on a state to view facility locations and click on a facility to list its name, the environmental statute the facility has an enforcement action under and a link to a detailed facility compliance report.
ECHO provides integrated searches of EPA and state data about inspections, violations and enforcement actions for more than 800,000 regulated facilities. Now in its ninth year, ECHO recently received its 10 millionth data query and has completed a record year of more than 2 million queries. President Obama recognized ECHO in his January 2011 Presidential Memorandum on regulatory compliance as a model for transparency for other federal agencies to follow.
Source: EPA
