EPA ECHO CWA Facilities Scraper — State Rosters

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Quick answer: This Actor pulls EPA ECHO's Clean Water Act facility registry for any US state and returns every regulated facility — name, address, registry ID, county, EPA region, and permit status — as flat JSON/CSV rows. No API key needed; you pay only for the facility rows that land in your dataset.

🎯 What this scrapes

EPA's ECHO (Enforcement and Compliance History Online) publishes every Clean Water Act–regulated facility, but pulling a full state roster means correctly handling ECHO's undocumented two-call protocol — a JSON search call that returns a query ID, then a single CSV download call that streams the entire result set at once with no server-side pagination. This Actor runs both calls, branches correctly on a match, a zero-match, or a rejected search, and flattens every facility — name, address, registry ID, county, EPA region, permit status — into one billable row.

🔥 What we handle for you

• 🧭 The two-call protocol, done right — one JSON search call, one CSV download call, exactly as ECHO expects. No guessed query params.
• 🧱 Zero matches is a clean success, not a failure — a narrow state/name combination finishes SUCCEEDED with a status message, never a false FAILED run.
• 🛡️ We rotate browser fingerprints (curl-cffi impersonation — Chrome/Firefox/Safari) on every request.
• 🔁 Retries with exponential backoff on 429 / 5xx, honouring Retry-After — up to 5 attempts per call.
• 🧊 Clean, typed dataset rows — Pydantic-validated, one malformed CSV row skipped and logged, never an aborted run.
• 💰 Pay-Per-Event pricing — you only pay for results that hit your dataset.

💡 Use cases

• ESG and environmental due diligence — pull every CWA-regulated facility in a state before a site acquisition or portfolio review.
• Compliance monitoring — track permit status (e.g. Effective, Administratively Continued) across a jurisdiction.
• Market research — size the number of regulated dischargers by state or county.
• Lead generation for environmental consultancies and permit-renewal services.

⚙️ How to use it

1. Click Try for free at the top of the page.
2. Set a 2-letter state (defaults to RI); optionally narrow with facilityName.
3. Click Start. Output streams into the run's dataset.
4. Export from Storage → Dataset as JSON, CSV, or Excel — or fetch via the API.

📥 Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Notes
state	string	yes	RI	2-letter US state code. ECHO rejects an unfiltered query, so a state is mandatory.
facilityName	string	no	—	Optional substring match against the facility name, e.g. hospital.
maxResults	integer	no	500	Caps rows pushed after CSV parsing. Each row is one billed result event.
proxyConfiguration	object	no	{"useApifyProxy": false}	EPA ECHO is a public keyless federal API. Leave off unless your account requires egress through Apify Proxy.

Example input

{
  "state": "RI",
  "maxResults": 500,
  "proxyConfiguration": {
    "useApifyProxy": false
  }
}

📤 Output

Every row is one dataset item.

Field	Type	Notes
facility_name	string	Facility name, e.g. ACME MANUFACTURING CO.
source_id	string	State-issued source ID, e.g. RI0001234.
street_address	string	Facility street address.
city	string	Facility city.
state	string	2-letter state code.
registry_id	string	EPA Facility Registry Service (FRS) registry ID.
epa_system	string	EPA regulatory system, e.g. CWA.
statute	string	Governing statute/program, e.g. NPDES.
county	string	Facility county.
epa_region	string	EPA region number, e.g. 01.
permit_status_desc	string	Current permit status description, e.g. Effective.
scraped_at	string	ISO 8601 UTC timestamp when the row was scraped.

Example output

{
  "facility_name": "ACME MANUFACTURING CO",
  "source_id": "RI0001234",
  "street_address": "123 INDUSTRIAL DR",
  "city": "PROVIDENCE",
  "state": "RI",
  "registry_id": "110000123456",
  "epa_system": "CWA",
  "statute": "NPDES",
  "county": "PROVIDENCE",
  "epa_region": "01",
  "permit_status_desc": "Effective",
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-25T12:00:00+00:00"
}

💰 Pricing

Pay-Per-Event — you pay only when these events fire:

Event	USD	What it is
actor-start	$0.20	One-off warm-up charge per run
result	$0.003	Per dataset item

Example: 1 000 results at the rates above ≈ $3.20. No subscription, no minimum, no card to start — Apify gives every new account $5 of free credit.

🚧 Limitations

• Clean Water Act (CWA) facilities only — Air (CAA), RCRA, and Safe Drinking Water Act programs are separate ECHO products, out of scope for v1.
• No violation/inspection/penalty history — this Actor returns current facility and permit status, not enforcement records.
• No county-level query filter — ECHO silently no-ops unrecognized filter params, so county narrowing isn't offered; county remains in the output.
• Large states (e.g. California, ~30,000+ rows) return a correspondingly large CSV in one response — use maxResults and facilityName to narrow.

❓ FAQ

Do I need an API key?

No. EPA ECHO's CWA REST service is public and keyless — no auth, no account required.

Why is state required?

ECHO rejects a completely unfiltered query. A 2-letter state code is the minimum viable filter and keeps result sets to a sane size.

What happens if my filters match nothing?

The run finishes successfully with zero rows and a status message describing what was searched — a narrow state/name combination legitimately returning no facilities is not an error.

Is this current or historical data?

ECHO serves current-state data only. There is no point-in-time snapshot or historical query in v1.

💬 Your feedback

Spotted a bug, hit a weird edge case, or need a new field? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab on Apify Console — we ship fixes weekly and we read every report.

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