Clean Water Act: EPA Needs to Better Assess and Disclose Quality of Compliance and Enforcement Data
Fast Facts
The EPA uses National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits to regulate wastewater discharges. However, nearly 11,000 facilities significantly exceeded their permit limits and illegally discharged pollutants into nearby waters in 2018.
EPA has a goal to reduce by half significant noncompliance with individual NPDES permits by the end of FY 2022. But the data that states and facilities report to EPA to help track compliance is incomplete and has errors.
We recommended (among other things) assessing the quality of the NPDES data that states and facilities are reporting so EPA can be sure it's making progress toward its goal.
Highlights
What GAO Found
Since 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has modified one of its three national initiatives emphasizing compliance with the Clean Water Act and has discontinued two others (see fig.). The goal of the modified initiative is to reduce significant noncompliance with National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits by half by the end of fiscal year 2022. Such permits set limits on discharges of wastewater from point sources, such as a pipe from an industrial facility. This goal supports EPA's strategic objective to increase compliance with environmental laws in its strategic plan for fiscal years 2018-2022. EPA discontinued its initiatives focused on animal waste pollution and raw sewage and stormwater runoff, returning these areas to the core enforcement program in 2018 and 2019, respectively. As a result, these areas no longer receive the heightened attention and focused resources of the national initiatives, but the agency still pursues enforcement actions when needed.
Changes in EPA's Clean Water Act National Initiatives
EPA posts data that states report on their NPDES compliance and enforcement activities to its website, but the data are not reliable for identifying changes in the number of activities states conducted since 2015. EPA's most recent assessment of states' data showed that two of 17 states met expectations for the accuracy and completeness of the data recorded in the agency's national database. EPA is working with states to improve their data, and it includes on its website disclosures by some states about problems and limitations with their data. However, the agency has not ensured that all states' disclosures are consolidated, complete, and updated. Until it does so, potential users of the data may not fully understand the data or the data's limitations.
EPA developed a measure to track progress toward its goal for reducing the rate of significant noncompliance by NPDES facilities with individual permits by the end of fiscal year 2022. While the measure tracks changes in the number of facilities in significant noncompliance, the results of the measure are unclear because data EPA needs to track compliance are incomplete and contain inaccuracies. According to EPA, about 70 percent of NDPES facilities have sufficiently complete data in the national database for EPA to track compliance. EPA is working with states to improve data quality, but it does not have a plan to assess the overall accuracy of the data. Until it does so, EPA cannot be certain what its measure is showing and if EPA is making progress toward its goal.
Why GAO Did This Study
EPA partners with states to oversee compliance with and enforcement of the Clean Water Act. In fiscal year 2020, there were roughly 335,000 facilities with active NPDES permits, which are used to regulate wastewater discharges under the act. In 2015, EPA began requiring states and facilities to electronically report data on their NPDES activities. EPA estimated that in 2018, nearly 11,000 facilities significantly exceeded their permit limits and illegally discharged pollutants into nearby waters, which may pose serious threats to human health and the environment.
GAO was asked to review EPA's enforcement of the Clean Water Act. This report examines (1) changes since 2015 in EPA's national initiatives for ensuring compliance with the act, (2) changes in NPDES compliance and enforcement activities since 2015, and (3) the extent to which EPA is measuring progress toward compliance with the NPDES program. GAO reviewed and analyzed EPA documents and data on NPDES compliance and enforcement activities. GAO also interviewed officials from eight states, selected in part by EPA region, to learn about their NPDES compliance and enforcement activities and data reporting.
Recommendations
GAO is making four recommendations, including that EPA consolidate, complete, and update disclosures of data limitations on its reporting website and develop a plan to assess the overall quality of state reported NPDES data. EPA generally agreed with these recommendations.
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Environmental Protection Agency | The Assistant Administrator of EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance should revise its guidance to select files for its State Review Framework assessments of state-reported data to incorporate statistically valid probability sampling. (Recommendation 1) |
In June 2024, EPA officials said they have developed a draft tool to pull a random selection of State Review Framework activities and will test this tool before using it in 2025. EPA and GAO will meet to discuss the tool and how it meets the requirements of a probability sample. GAO will continue to monitor these actions.
|
| Environmental Protection Agency | The Assistant Administrator of EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance should ensure that consolidated, complete, and updated information on all data limitations is disclosed on the State Water Dashboard. (Recommendation 2) |
As of April 2024, EPA's website included several links reflecting that EPA has taken multiple steps to include additional information about known limitations and issues with data available through the Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) dashboard, along with making the information more accessible and transparent to potential users.
|
| Environmental Protection Agency | The Assistant Administrator of EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance should develop a plan to determine the overall accuracy and completeness of the permit limit and discharge monitoring report data recorded in its national database. (Recommendation 3) |
As of April 2024, EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) had improved the completeness of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit limits and monitoring data in its national database (ICIS-NPDES). EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) website includes a NPDES eRule Readiness and Data Completeness Dashboard to track the completeness of this data, which shows that the completeness of the data has been improving. However, the dashboard does not address the accuracy of the reported data. In June 2024, EPA officials stated they had published the NPDES Data Accuracy Dashboard in ECHO Gov and provided training to its regions and states on the use of the dashboard. However, this dashboard is only available to EPA and states, not the public. GAO will work with EPA to access the data and determine whether it can and should be made public.
|
| Environmental Protection Agency | The Assistant Administrator of EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance should develop a performance measure to track the reduction in pollutant discharges resulting from enforcement actions for facilities in significant noncompliance and disclose any limitations. (Recommendation 4) |
As of April 2024, OECA added information to its website about results achieved through reduction of significant noncompliance with National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits, such as the number of individual permits with complete data in its database that can be used to calculate noncompliance rates and links to recently completed enforcement actions for NPDES permit violations. However, there is no information about the reduction of pollutants discharged and how water quality has improved as result of the decreased rate of significant noncompliance. In July 2024, EPA officials stated they had developed an internal measure for the annual load over limit for each NPDES permit. They can use this information to track pollutant discharge reductions overall. However, officials also stated that the data errors in its database skew the results. They stated the results are not valuable to share with the public. With appropriate explanation and data correction, the information would provide the public with information on the water quality benefits of the NPDES program. GAO will continue to follow up on this recommendation.
|