RCRA Compliance:CUPA Data goes Public!

Understanding the flow from your agency to ECHO.epa.gov

Elizabeth Janes, USEPA Region 9, janes.elizabeth@epa.govRCRAinfo Database System AdministratorPrepared for CUPA Annual Conference, February, 2018

1. Agreeing to a universe: Facilities subject to RCRA in California

Data system How RCRA ID is assigned

USEPARCRAinfo

Sites must apply for an ID that is assigned, generally one per site, by CA DTSC staff.

DTSC Hazardous Waste Tracking System (HWTS)

DTSC issues IDs for sites generating state-only waste. Sometimes sites use this ID for federally defined RCRA waste manifests and their CERS ID.

CalEPA CERS The facility provides its RCRA ID. There is no automated validation of this data.

RCRA sites are also known to USEPA as “Handlers.”

Applicability in CA is complicated by the state regulating everything subject to federal regulation PLUS state defined wastes such as used oil.

2. Inspections, violations, enforcement and reporting

DTSC uploads CME data from Envirostor to RCRAinfo 15th of every month

RCRAinfo compliance information uploaded to ECHO.epa.gov

Regulated entities report errors or misrepresentations of compliance status back to EPA through ECHO or contacting us directly.

EPA R9 inspectors add their inspections, violations and enforcement actions directly to RCRAinfo

CERS uploads CME data to RCRAinfo 1st of every month for all CME actions (mid-2016 was first flow of all data 10/1/2011 or newer)

Some (not all) CUPAselectronically flow Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement (CME) data to CERS or they enter it directly

What flows to RCRAinfo and ECHO?If a CERS site has no RCRA ID, or it has a questionable RCRA ID, it is not shared with RCRAinfo.

Some CUPAs recognize facility components (for example, a loading dock at a naval base) as an individual CERS site, so some large sites like naval bases or college campuses may have multiple inspection counts in a year.

RCRAinfo can see these differences; ECHO doesn’t show if it is CUPA or DTSC activity.

> 60 regulators of RCRA C sites in California look like 2 to ECHO: either EPA Region 9 or ‘the State’ is the compliance agency.

Summary according to RCRAinfo.

The current flow of CUPA compliance data includes all activities from 10/1/2011 to the present.

Violation data summary

> 3900 unique sites with violations determined by the state per history in RCRAinfo, 2003-present

Of > 26,000 violations recorded, > 24,000 (93%) have been returned to compliance!

When a CUPA is responsible for an inspection, violation, or enforcement, this prefix shows in the Notes.

1. Top Violators with all violations Returned to Compliance (RTC’d)

1,911 RCRA violations not returned to compliance; > 1000 of those violations are over 5 years old.

Data does not always indicate which agency observed the violation, DTSC or CUPA. Data flowed since 2013 likely is tagged “CUPA” but prior years’ input may or may not contain that metadata.

2. Top Violators with outstanding violations

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3. Unresolved violations

• Current data may be accurate (site is in violation) or incomplete.

• The original data sets from CERS were not QA’d and contain errors due to bad IDs. Older CUPA data has not been reviewed by CalEPA.

• EPA and DTSC staff have been told by sites that a site’s compliance status on ECHO may be used to evaluate insurance and property transactions. Data errors may adversely impact those businesses.

ECHO.epa.gov currently shows 336California facilities currently in noncompliance with RCRA for 3 or more years. How many of these are actual violations and how many are data errors?

ECHO: Environmental Compliance History Online. http://echo.epa.gov.

Public access requires no password.

4. Example: One site on the RCRA violation list appears to be a significant violator. Where did data originate?

Violation data for that same ID in RCRAinfo, http://rcrainfo.epa.gov (password required).

Please note CUPA sequences on evaluation and violation and enforcement all begin with ‘6.’

Example 1: ECHO backwards to CERS on one site

Many recorded violations remain open (e.g., not returned to compliance) from all three levels of government.

DTSC Envirostor compliance report of the same site, 1/16/2018.

Find the same inspection and violation record in CERS:

Why are so many unique sites using the one site’s EPA RCRA ID? Is there a mechanism for helping CUPAs QA the data?

Nevertheless, for this facility, it looks like CUPA observed violations were RTC but the data did not flow to RCRAinfo possibly due to failing the ID validation.

5. What can CUPAs do?

• Research your jurisdiction on ECHO.epa.gov• Request from EPA (CalEPA or R9) the current list of

sites that have unresolved violations• QA CERS LQG universe data, especially RCRA IDs,

with ECHO.epa.gov or HWTS• Provide input to CalEPA if it is acceptable to

globally update violations over a certain age, so that they don’t appear in ECHO

• Request a CERS update that validates facility data against HWTS and RCRAinfo ID and site information

Appendix: using the ECHO error reporter

Any member of the public (including co-regulators) may click on either of these two report error links to relay a complaint about this data to EPA. For RCRA data in California, the error report is relayed to EPA R9. We research it to determine if the data is truly in error or the fault of data flow problems.