Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) is a web‐based application that allows organizations to access the previous two years of their Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inspection and compliance history. ECHO provides very comprehensive information. The database can be searched, and its output manipulated, in many ways, and it is quite flexible. Unfortunately, its obscure interface and the presentation of the data in each record rendered the product difficult to use for this reviewer; for an infrequent database searcher it might be more difficult still.
ECHO records contain three types of information for a company or given location: inspection history, the results of those inspections with regard to compliance, and the penalties the organization incurred, if any, as a result of those inspections. The basic search page allows users to search by zip code. It also contains links to other search forms, including forms for searching each type of regulation, information about Supplemental Environmental Projects, individual EPA cases, or some combination of identification numbers. The zip code area of the form includes radio buttons marked Large Facilities and All Facilities – the documentation makes clear that “large” facilities are those with a particular type of permit. If “all” is selected, a window pops up with a warning that records for minor facilities may be incomplete. Once users select one of these possibilities, a form allowing for a variety of other search criteria appears. These forms are easy to read and to use. The addition of a way to search for all records affecting a particular facility, rather than first selecting a zip code or general topic, would be an improvement.
Once a search has been submitted, the database presents results in an easily read table. By default, the tables of results list facilities in alphabetical order, and have cells indicating EPA inspections, violations, and “enforcement actions” over the previous two years. This reviewer, far from expert when it comes to EPA compliance, was somewhat confused by the indication of violations found when no inspections had been performed; it is hard to know whether this seeming contradiction is due to faulty data or is, in fact, an artefact of the EPA inspection process. The results for each individual facility, viewed by selecting its hyperlinked name on the results list, are quite detailed. The data are presented, again, in tables. The number of abbreviations and ID numbers render the data somewhat hard to parse for non‐experts; perhaps users more familiar with the information at hand would have an easier time making sense of it. The presence of frequent links to the data dictionaries (and a link allowing users to report errors) makes the compliance records easier to understand than they would otherwise have been. An added bonus, located at the bottom of each record, is demographic information about the area surrounding the facility, broken down by age, race, education level and income.
ECHO appears to be a useful tool for those well versed in EPA compliance data. Fortunately for non‐experts, the documentation is fairly clear and readily available. The interface is clean and easy to use, and the database output is printer‐friendly. With the exception of the mildly confusing gateway, this database allows users to quickly find the information they need. Because the data dictionaries are included, they can interpret the information presented quickly as well.
