EPA Enforcement Actions Feed: Environmental Penalties, Consent Decrees & Violations API

Get a clean, daily feed of new US EPA and state environmental enforcement cases against companies and facilities: Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, RCRA hazardous waste, Safe Drinking Water Act, EPCRA, FIFRA pesticide, CERCLA Superfund and TSCA lead-paint cases, with federal and state penalties, Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs), consent decrees, final orders, violation types, facility name and address, company defendants and direct ECHO links. Export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or schedule it in new since last run mode as an environmental enforcement alert feed.

Data comes straight from EPA's official ECHO (Enforcement and Compliance History Online) case services, the same ICIS Federal Enforcement & Compliance data behind ECHO's Enforcement Case Search. No login, no API key, no scraping of web pages.

Why this one: most EPA/ECHO tools on the Store are facility lookups (you must already know which facility to ask about). This Actor is case-centric and time-based: it tells you what enforcement happened in the last N days across the whole country, newest first, with the full case report (milestones, penalties, SEPs, complying actions, pollutants, summary) merged into one flat record.

Who it is for

• ESG, sustainability and compliance analysts: track environmental penalties and consent decrees against portfolio companies, suppliers and peers; feed ESG controversy scores.
• Environmental lawyers and consultants: see new CAFOs, consent decrees and penalty orders by statute, state or region the week they are recorded; prospect companies that just settled.
• Insurers and underwriters: environmental liability signals by facility, industry (NAICS/SIC) and state.
• Supply-chain and procurement risk teams: watch suppliers' plants for Clean Air / Clean Water violations and penalties.
• Journalists, NGOs and researchers: a weekly digest of the largest environmental penalties, with case summaries and links.
• Lenders, M&A and due-diligence teams: recent enforcement history before a deal.
• Developers: normalized ECHO case data through the Apify API, webhooks and integrations (Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, n8n).

What you get for each case

• Case: case number, ECHO activity ID, case name, category (administrative formal / judicial / informal), status, enforcement type (e.g. Civil Judicial Action, CAA 113D1 Action for Penalty, State CWA Penalty AO), civil/criminal, lead agency (EPA / State / Local), court and DOJ docket numbers.
• Law: primary statute (CAA, CWA, RCRA, SDWA, EPCRA, FIFRA, CERCLA, TSCA) with full name, all statutes involved, law sections and programs (e.g. MACT Standards, Industrial Stormwater, Lead-Based Paint Disclosure Rule), violation types.
• Money: federal penalty, state/local penalty, total penalty, penalty collected, SEP cost with SEP category and description, compliance action (injunctive relief) cost, cost recovery.
• Dates: latest milestone and its date (actionDate), complaint filed, settlement lodged, final order entered/issued, closed, and the full milestone timeline.
• Who / where: company defendants, facility name, street address, city, state, ZIP, FRS ID, NAICS/SIC, all facilities in the case (up to 25), EPA region.
• Context: pollutants, complying actions (monitoring, testing, emission controls...), voluntary disclosure flag, EPA's case summary.
• Links: ECHO case report (echoCaseUrl), ECHO detailed facility report per facility, and the JSON API URL.
• New since last run mode with saved history per State key; a case is delivered again when it reaches a new milestone (e.g. complaint filed, then consent decree entered).
• Privacy by design: entity-level data only. Defendants who appear to be private individuals are omitted (and masked in case names and summaries); cases brought only against individuals are skipped.
• Fast: a default run takes about 15 seconds at 512 MB.

Quick start

1. Click Start with the default input. You get about 40 of the most recent civil enforcement cases nationwide (formal administrative orders and judicial cases with a milestone in the last 30 days), with full case details.
2. Narrow it down: states, statutes, minPenalty, companyKeyword, leads. Raise maxItems (up to 5,000) and daysBack (up to 365) for bigger pulls.
3. Weekly enforcement alerts (schedule tip): create an Apify Schedule (e.g. every Monday 8:00) with:

{ "mode": "sinceLastRun", "stateKey": "big-penalties", "minPenalty": 100000, "daysBack": 45, "maxItems": 500 }

Each run delivers only cases (or new case milestones) not delivered before for that stateKey. Connect Slack, e-mail, Google Sheets or a webhook. Use one stateKey per schedule. Keep daysBack at 30+ because ECHO publishes case data weekly with a 1-2 week lag.

More examples:

• Texas and Louisiana Clean Air Act cases this quarter: { "states": ["TX", "LA"], "statutes": ["CAA"], "daysBack": 90, "maxItems": 500 }
• Penalties of $1M+ in the last year: { "minPenalty": 1000000, "daysBack": 365, "maxItems": 1000 }
• Everything mentioning a company: { "companyKeyword": "Tyson", "daysBack": 365 }
• EPA-led pesticide (FIFRA) import cases: { "statutes": ["FIFRA"], "leads": ["EPA"], "daysBack": 60 }
• Bulk year export, list fields only (fast): { "daysBack": 365, "maxItems": 5000, "enrichDetails": false }

Input

Field	Default	Meaning
states	all	case location state codes, e.g. TX, CA, PR
statutes	all	CAA, CWA, RCRA, SDWA, EPCRA, FIFRA, CERCLA, TSCA (primary or secondary law)
minPenalty	0	minimum federal + state/local penalty in USD
companyKeyword	none	case name contains this text
daysBack	30	cases with a milestone in the last N days (1-365)
maxItems	40	cap per run (also caps spend); newest first
caseCategories	formal admin + judicial	add AIF for informal actions (NOVs, warning letters)
leads	all	EPA, State, Local
includeCriminal	false	add federal environmental criminal cases (company cases only)
enrichDetails	true	merge the ECHO case report (facility, defendants, milestones, SEPs...)
mode	window	window = everything in the window; sinceLastRun = only new (use for schedules)
stateKey	default	saved history name for sinceLastRun

Output example (real record, Oct 2026; shortened)

{
  "caseNumber": "06-2022-3400",
  "caseName": "DOMTAR A.W. LLC-ASHDOWN MILL-ECDAT Consent Decree-FY2026",
  "caseCategory": "Judicial",
  "enforcementType": "Civil Judicial Action",
  "lead": "EPA",
  "primaryLaw": "CAA",
  "primaryLawName": "Clean Air Act",
  "violationTypes": ["National Emission Standard For Hazardous Air Pollutant", "New Source Performance Standard"],
  "actionDate": "2026-10-21",
  "latestMilestone": "Final Order Entered",
  "dateFiled": "2026-07-24",
  "federalPenalty": 750000,
  "stateLocalPenalty": 750000,
  "totalPenalty": 1500000,
  "defendants": ["Domtar A.W., LLC"],
  "facilityName": "DOMTAR A.W. LLC - ASHDOWN MILL",
  "facilityAddress": "285 HIGHWAY 71 SOUTH",
  "facilityCity": "ASHDOWN",
  "facilityState": "AR",
  "epaRegion": "06",
  "naicsCode": "113310",
  "pollutants": ["HYDROGEN CHLORIDE", "Mercury", "TOTAL HAZARDOUS AIR POLLUTANTS (HAPS)", "VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS (VOCS)"],
  "courtDocketNumber": "4:26-cv-04059-JTS",
  "caseSummary": "EPA and DOJ filed this action with Arkansas Division of Environmental Quality against the Defendant for violations of the Clean Air Act ... agreed to pay a penalty of $1,500,000 and perform injunctive relief ...",
  "echoCaseUrl": "https://echo.epa.gov/enforcement-case-report?id=06-2022-3400"
}

Full examples: sample-output.json. Every run also writes a summary (window, filters, counts, skipped records) to the OUTPUT record. The dataset has an Enforcement cases table view.

Glossary

CAFO = Consent Agreement and Final Order (administrative settlement). Consent decree = court-approved settlement in a judicial case (lodged, then entered). SEP = Supplemental Environmental Project a company agrees to fund as part of a settlement. Lead = agency that brought the case (state-lead cases are those states report to EPA). AFR/JDC/AIF = administrative formal / judicial / administrative informal.

Data source, update timing and fair use

• US EPA ECHO case web services (echodata.epa.gov/echo/case_rest_services: case search + case report), built on EPA's ICIS Federal Enforcement & Compliance (FE&C) data, the same data as ECHO's Enforcement Case Search and the ICIS FE&C national data set.
• EPA refreshes ECHO case data weekly; new cases typically appear 1-3 weeks after the milestone date.
• U.S. Government data, free, no API key. Polite access with a declared User-Agent, rate limiting and retries.
• Penalty amounts are as recorded in ECHO (assessed, not necessarily collected; see penaltyCollected). Not affiliated with or endorsed by the U.S. EPA. Confirm critical decisions against the official case report (echoCaseUrl).
• Related feeds from moment-data: Federal Register Notices Feed, US Product Recalls Feed, SEC EDGAR Filings Feed.

Pricing

Pay per event: a small fee per run plus a fee per enforcement case delivered. maxItems caps your spend, and runs stop cleanly at your maximum charge limit. See the Pricing tab.

FAQ

How fresh is it? As fresh as ECHO: weekly updates, usually 1-3 weeks after the order or filing date. Use daysBack 30+ with sinceLastRun so late-arriving cases are never missed. Does it include inspections or violations without a case? No, this is the enforcement case feed (orders, penalties, consent decrees). Informal actions can be added with caseCategories: ["AFR","JDC","AIF"]. Why is a case name empty? Some states report cases without a name; use facilityName and defendants. Can I get older history? Up to 365 days per run with daysBack.