EPA ECHO Facility Compliance Delta Monitor

Watchlist-free delta monitor of U.S. EPA regulated facilities via the public EPA Envirofacts Data Service (envirofacts_site). Emits one dataset alert per facility that is new or changed since the last run — "free when nothing changes" (unchanged replays emit nothing).

Who it is for

Environmental consultants and engineering firms (site acquisition / due diligence), ESG and supply-chain compliance teams, environmental law firms, environmental-liability insurance underwriters, and industrial buyers siting new facilities. Enforcement history and penalty exposure drive real transaction and insurance decisions, so buyers pay for the signal — per-state or per-facility monitoring — rather than re-polling EPA by hand.

What makes it different

Existing Apify Store actors for EPA ECHO / Envirofacts are typically on-demand scrapers: you run them, get a batch, and run again when you want an update. This Actor keeps a checkpoint keyed by the facility registry ID (site_id), so repeat runs emit only genuinely new or changed facilities — free when nothing changes, pay only on signal.

Data source

Public U.S. government data only, via the EPA Envirofacts Data Service:

• https://data.epa.gov/efservice/envirofacts_site

No credentials, no signup, no proxies, no scraping of rate-limited or anti-bot pages, no commercial inference (no LLMs) inside the product.

Output

One dataset item per new or changed facility since the last run. The full schema is defined in .actor/dataset_schema.json and the Actor output schema in .actor/output_schema.json.

Example output item:

{
  "site_id": "0100001",
  "registry_id": "0100001",
  "epa_id": "CTD000604546",
  "facility_name": "CT RESOURCE RECOVERY AUTHORITY",
  "city": "SHELTON",
  "state": "CT",
  "zip": "06488",
  "county": "NEW HAVEN",
  "epa_region": "01",
  "latitude": null,
  "longitude": null,
  "archived": "Y",
  "regulated_programs": null,
  "compliance_status": null,
  "violations": null,
  "inspections": null,
  "formal_enforcement_actions": null,
  "assessed_penalties": null,
  "changeType": "new",
  "changedAt": "2026-11-02T22:00:00+00:00",
  "sourceUrl": "https://data.epa.gov/efservice/envirofacts_site/1:200/JSON",
  "checkpointKey": "epa_echo_facility_compliance"
}

Every field is null when it could not be parsed from the source — the Actor never guesses. The envirofacts_site view provides site_id, epa_id, name, city, state, ZIP, county, EPA region and lat/long; a separate 12-digit FRS registry_id, CAA/CWA/RCRA/SDWA program flags, compliance status, violations, inspections, formal enforcement actions and assessed penalties are not provided by that view and are emitted as null. On repeat runs with no facility changes the dataset is empty ("free when nothing changes").

Checkpoint behaviour

The delta checkpoint key is the facility site_id (the stable Envirofacts site / registry identifier). State (the previously seen field snapshot per site_id) is kept in a named Actor key-value store (epa-echo-facility-compliance-checkpoints), so repeat runs emit only facilities that are new or whose tracked fields changed (epa_id, facility_name, city, state, zip, county, epa_region, latitude, longitude, archived). Resetting the store re-emits the full slice.

Pricing (pay-per-event, Apify Store — publication task sets this)

• Actor start: $0.0001 per run (apify-actor-start)
• EPA ECHO facility compliance alert (dataset item): $0.005 per alert (apify-default-dataset-item, primary)
• Apify retains a 20% commission; payouts require completed identity verification (KYC) — an owner step at payout time.

Price changes are limited to no more than once per month, with at least 14 days' notice (per Apify Terms).

Input

See .actor/input_schema.json. No required fields — the default input is empty and monitors one facility registry slice with no filters.

• sourceUrl: EPA Envirofacts facility endpoint URL (default: the public envirofacts_site feed).

Example:

{}

Files

• main.py — Apify SDK Python Actor
• requirements.txt — pinned deps (apify==4.1.0, httpx==0.27.2); pytest/ruff are dev tools
• tests/test_monitor.py — deterministic unit tests, no network
• .actor/actor.json, .actor/input_schema.json, .actor/output_schema.json, .actor/dataset_schema.json — Apify platform metadata

Run pytest tests before release (builder acceptance criterion).

Search terms

EPA ECHO monitor, Envirofacts facility data, EPA compliance violation tracker, regulated facility monitor, environmental enforcement actions tracker, EPA facility compliance data, Toxic Release Inventory facility monitor, ESG supplier due diligence EPA.