🌍 EPA ECHO Enforcement Scraper — Environmental Compliance Intel

Pull every EPA-regulated facility — Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, RCRA — with full compliance, inspection, and penalty history. Direct from the EPA's ECHO data services. No API key, no paywall, ESG-grade.

The EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) is the canonical compliance database for every Industrial site, refinery, wastewater plant, hazardous-waste handler, and air emitter regulated by the federal government. This Actor wraps the official cwa_rest_services / air_rest_services / rcra_rest_services two-step Query-ID API and ships clean rows ready for ESG screening, plaintiff prospecting, M&A diligence, and investigative journalism.

What you get (per facility)

• program — CWA / CAA / RCRA
• facility_name, epa_registry_id, source_id — identity + EPA's master 12-digit Registry ID
• address_street / _city / _state / _zip, epa_region, latitude, longitude
• naics_codes, sic_codes — industry classification
• npdes_ids, air_ids, rcra_ids, sdwa_ids, tri_ids — cross-program permit IDs
• inspection_count, date_last_inspection, inspected_in_last_5_years
• snc_status — Significant Non-Complier flag (CWA / CAA HPV / RCRA SNC)
• snc_event_description — narrative
• qtrs_with_non_compliance, qtrs_with_significant_violation
• violation_status, current_violation_flag
• total_penalties_usd, date_last_penalty
• compliance_history_13qtrs — 13-quarter history string (V/S/-/N indicators)
• echo_facility_url — direct link to ECHO Detailed Facility Report
• raw_columns — the entire ECHO column payload for downstream parsing

Six high-leverage use cases

1. ESG screen at the facility level — pull every CWA facility in a state with snc_status = "Y" to flag environmental risk before fund inclusion.
2. Plaintiff law-firm prospecting — facilities with qtrs_with_significant_violation > 4 AND total_penalties_usd > 0 are prime mass-tort + citizen-suit candidates.
3. M&A diligence — given a target's address list, pull EPA program coverage + outstanding violations before signing the LOI.
4. Industry compliance benchmark — filter naicsCodes: ["324110"] (petroleum refining) and compare SNC quarter ratios across regions.
5. Local investigative journalism — set state: "WV", program: "CWA" and surface every wastewater discharger with active violations in your beat.
6. GovTech sales — environmental software sells on outstanding violations. Use this feed to enrich your CRM with active-non-compliance prospects.

JSON quick start

{
  "state": "TX",
  "program": "CWA",
  "complianceStatus": "Significant Violation",
  "maxFacilities": 50
}

POST to https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~epa-echo-enforcement-scraper/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN.

Python SDK example

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("nexgendata/epa-echo-enforcement-scraper").call(
    run_input={"state": "TX", "program": "CWA", "maxFacilities": 50}
)
flagged = [
    item for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items()
    if item.get("snc_status") == "Y" or (item.get("total_penalties_usd") or 0) > 100_000
]
print(f"{len(flagged)} flagged facilities in Texas CWA")

cURL one-liner

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nexgendata~epa-echo-enforcement-scraper/runs?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"state":"TX","program":"CWA","maxFacilities":50}'

Pipe the output anywhere

• Zapier — daily watcher → SNC-flag rows → Slack alert
• Make.com — Apify trigger → Airtable / Google Sheets
• n8n — Apify run → enrichment workflow → MailerLite
• Snowflake / BigQuery — schedule daily ingest into your ESG warehouse

Pricing — pay only for what you get

Event	Cost
Actor start	$0.00005 (one-time per run, scaled by GB-RAM)
Each facility	$0.08

A statewide pull (~1,000 facilities) is ~$80. A nationwide CWA SNC list (~10K facilities) is ~$800. Compare to commercial environmental-data subscriptions like Verisk 3E ($25K+/yr), Enhesa ($15K+/yr), or Definitive Healthcare's environmental tier.

Cost calculator: facilities × $0.08 + $0.00005 × memoryGB. No subscription, no minimum.

FAQ

Q. What's the difference between CWA, CAA, and RCRA? A. CWA = Clean Water Act (NPDES wastewater permits). CAA = Clean Air Act (Title V air permits). RCRA = Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (hazardous-waste generators / TSDFs). Each program has its own facility universe; some facilities show up in multiple programs.

Q. What's "SNC"? A. Significant Non-Complier (CWA term). For CAA the equivalent is HPV (High Priority Violator). For RCRA it's also SNC. We surface all three under snc_status and qtrs_with_significant_violation.

Q. Why is the inspection date sometimes null? A. Some facilities have never been formally inspected (e.g. low-priority general-permit covered facilities). The null is fidelity to the source.

Q. Can I pull historical penalty events / formal enforcement actions? A. ECHO's Enforcement Case (FEA) endpoint is a separate dataset. This Actor surfaces the aggregate total_penalties_usd and date_last_penalty per facility. For per-case detail, follow the echo_facility_url link.

Q. Does the data include state-only enforcement? A. Yes — ECHO aggregates federal AND state-led enforcement (state programs delegated under EPA primacy authority).

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• FDA Recall Monitor — food/drug/device recalls. (Coming soon — register interest in the Apify Console.)
• FTC Enforcement Actions Scraper — antitrust + consumer-protection cases.

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Built and maintained by the nexgendata team. Bug reports & feature requests welcome via Apify Console messaging.