EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online portal is a public federal extract of your system's Safe Drinking Water Information System file. You open it with a PWSID. What you get is a Detailed Facility Report: inventory, violations, and enforcement, as of the last official quarterly refresh.

This page is how to open that report and read it without treating it as a live monitoring schedule. It is not a walkthrough of each violation type on the federal file. Confirm anything you act on with your state primacy agency. This isn't legal advice.

Open ECHO with the PWSID, not the town name

Go to EPA's ECHO site and choose the drinking water search. Type the PWSID exactly as it appears on state letters and lab chain-of-custody forms. Most identifiers are a two-letter primacy code plus seven digits. A few primacy agencies use a longer string. Use the number on the letter, not a guess.

A name search is how you open the wrong system. Two towns can share a name. Consecutive sellers and buyers can look alike. If the PWSID on the result does not match the number on your last state letter, you are in someone else's file. If you need the identifier, use PWSID lookup.

From the result list, open the system's page and then the Detailed Facility Report. The search-result row is a one-line snapshot. The report is the document you actually read.

Read the "Current As Of" date first

Every Detailed Facility Report carries a "Current As Of" date. That is the date of the last official SDWIS extract sitting in ECHO, not the date you clicked. EPA's own drinking-water help text says violation data for a calendar quarter become available in SDWIS after the end of the following quarter, then move into ECHO after that. In practice the public view often lags three to six months.

Write that date on the printout. If you are briefing a board in August and the report is current as of March, say so. A clean ECHO page dated last winter does not prove the spring nitrate or the June coliform file is closed.

What the Detailed Facility Report actually shows

Layout varies as EPA refreshes the site, but the same blocks keep showing up:

  • Inventory. System name, PWSID, activity status, system type (community, non-transient non-community, transient), source (ground water, surface water, or purchased), and population served. Confirm these before you argue a violation. A wrong population can imply the wrong sample count.
  • Compliance status. Quarters in noncompliance and, when it applies, a significant noncompliance flag. That flag is a ranking tool. It is not a separate rule.
  • Violations. Rule, contaminant or requirement, compliance period, and status (unaddressed, addressed, resolved, or returned to compliance, depending on the extract). This is history, not a calendar of samples you still owe.
  • Enforcement. Informal actions (a notice of violation, a warning letter) and formal actions (an administrative order, a consent order, a penalty). These are responses to violations, not the violations themselves.
  • Inspections or surveys. When the extract includes them, you will see sanitary-survey or inspection dates. The findings live in the state's letter, not in this table. See How to read your sanitary survey letter.

A violation is not an enforcement action

Operators collapse these two lines. Don't.

  • A violation is a finding that a requirement was not met: a missed sample, a late report, an MCL, a treatment technique, a missed public notice. The federal file records the finding by rule and period.
  • Informal enforcement is the state or EPA telling you, in writing, to fix it. It is still an action. It may never appear as a formal order.
  • Formal enforcement is an administrative order, a consent agreement, or a penalty. That is a different legal instrument. An administrative order is a different instrument from the violation row itself.

You can carry an open monitoring violation with no formal order on the page. You can also see an order whose underlying violation already shows returned to compliance. Read both columns. The violation type itself is a different page: How to read your SDWIS violation record.

See exactly what your system is up against

Search by system name or PWSID and get your EPA violation history, open requirements, and upcoming deadlines in under a minute. Free, no account, no obligation.

ECHO is not Drinking Water Watch, and neither is the live schedule

Three public views get used as if they were one system. They are not.

  • ECHO Detailed Facility Report. Federal public extract. Good for a board packet and for what a journalist can already see. Slow. Not a sampling calendar.
  • State Drinking Water Watch (or the state's equivalent public SDWIS view). Often newer than ECHO. Some states show sample results and a contact. Some show a monitoring summary. It is still a public view of a state database, not the signed schedule the primacy agency mailed you.
  • The official monitoring schedule. That document comes from the primacy agency, addressed to your system, with sites, contaminant groups, frequency, and due dates. Ask for it with the PWSID. Public SDWIS views lag. Do not plan bottle kits off an ECHO screen.

Wyoming is the exception in kind, not in the work: EPA Region 8 is the primacy agency, so the official schedule and the federal extract both sit closer together. You still ask the Region for the schedule. You still do not treat ECHO as the due-date list.

If the public record does not match what you think you filed, print both and ask the primacy agency which file is current. Do not build next month's bottle list from ECHO.

What to do the day you open the report

  • Confirm the PWSID, system type, and "Current As Of" date.
  • List every unaddressed or open violation. For each one, pull the state's letter or the lab report that belongs to that period. Do not explain a line you have not matched to paper.
  • List every enforcement action. If an order is still open, the order's own dates control, not the ECHO status word.
  • If ECHO shows a violation the state already closed, ask the primacy agency, in writing, to push the closeout. Federal extracts catch up on their own clock.
  • If ECHO is clean and the state file is not, believe the state file.
  • Do not change next month's sampling plan from this screen. Call or email the primacy contact and ask for the current schedule.

Print the Detailed Facility Report the same day you send a board packet or a funding application. The public page can shift at the next quarterly refresh. Keep the printout with the rest of the compliance file. See water system record retention.

FAQ

Is ECHO the same thing as SDWIS?

No. SDWIS is the data system. ECHO is a public website that publishes a lagged extract of the federal SDWIS file. Your state also keeps a primacy database that feeds that file on a quarterly cycle. The live truth for due dates and closeouts is the state file, plus the letter the state sent you.

Can I use ECHO to see which samples are due this month?

No. The Detailed Facility Report is compliance and enforcement history. It is not a monitoring schedule. Ask the primacy agency for the official schedule by PWSID: contaminant groups, sample sites, frequency, and due dates.

A violation is on ECHO but the state says it is closed. Who is right?

The primacy agency's written closeout is what you act on. ECHO can trail that letter by a quarter or more. Ask the state to confirm the closeout in writing and to push the federal update. Keep both the letter and the dated ECHO printout.

Does a blank enforcement section mean I have no violations?

No. Plenty of systems carry monitoring or reporting violations with no formal order on the page. Read the violation block. Then read the state's own list. Formal enforcement is the exception, not the proof that everything else is fine.

Check my system at /find-my-system.

Orevant provides compliance information tools. This page isn't legal advice. Confirm the ECHO extract, the state file, and any closeout with your primacy agency.