On May 16, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added new features to the Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) tool that allow the public to search for information about which drinking water systems have violated federal and state regulations.

The upgrades also include a serious violators report, which lists water suppliers with serious noncompliance problems, and EPA’s 2009 National Public Water Systems Compliance Report, which summarizes information on compliance and enforcement at public drinking water systems. All this after the EPA just updated the ECHO data and a mapping tool in March to help the public compare water quality trends over the last two years.

Launched in 2002, ECHO is a web-based tool that allows the public to find information on permits, inspections, violations, enforcement actions, and penalties for approximately 800,000 regulated facilities nationwide. ECHO is updated monthly via the Integrated Data for Enforcement analysis (IDEA) system database, which EPA has maintained since 1990. The site has received public appraisal as a tool to “encourage polluters to change their act” and make them more accountable to “the communities they harm.”

Though the ECHO database is a useful tool for making transparent public environmental compliance information, it does have its limitations. The site has long struggled to present information in a format that is easily understood and used by members of the general public. For the new Drinking Water Data Search, ECHO only displays whether a violation has occurred at public water systems. It also does not provide information as to the magnitude of that violation. The main reason for this gap in information is because the U.S. EPA collects data from states regarding violations, but information regarding the magnitude and amounts are not required. States, who implement the Safe Drinking Water Act and state drinking water programs, often have more details in their data systems than they report to the EPA. Thus, for now, it is best to contact a state’s drinking water program for more detailed information.

In addition, the Drinking Water Data Search primarily includes data from larger water facilities. Smaller facilities may not have received a recent inspection, and states do not need to report to the EPA some violations at smaller facilities. Hence, it is possible, especially for smaller facilities, such as local community schools and park districts, to appear in the database as being compliant with environmental laws, even though they may have violations that have not yet been discovered.

Though the drinking water violation data provided on the ECHO database is helpful, providing a fuller picture will enable the public to fully understand how this data impacts their environment and health. Thus, it would be useful for the ECHO database to obtain current information for all systems, large and small, and to include information regarding the magnitude of the violations.

With improvements, the ECHO database has the potential to be an even more interactive and transparent web-based tool to enable states, industry, and – most importantly – consumers to have better access to timely information about their drinking water.