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Sustained Compliance
Standard Criteria | Small Business Criteria | Site Visits | Annual Performance Reporting | Independent Assessment
- Performance Track Compliance Screening Criteria
- Criminal Activity
- Civil Activity
- Significant Non-Compliance Overview
Performance Track members must have a sustained record of compliance with environmental laws and commit to maintaining the level of compliance needed to qualify for the program.
Performance Track relies on compliance screening criteria that were developed by EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance for all EPA voluntary programs—criteria that were strengthened by Performance Track. EPA will screen all applications using the criteria listed below. These criteria are consistent with EPA's Compliance Screening for EPA Partnership Programs: Policy Overview (PDF, 74KB, 24pp). In evaluating an applicant's compliance record, EPA, along with its state partners, will consult available databases and enforcement information sources. EPA encourages applicants to assess their own compliance record to ensure that the facility meets Performance Track program screening criteria. Facilities can access their compliance records for the last three years using EPA's Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO). Facilities should note that EPA's review of an applicant's compliance record examines a more comprehensive set of EPA, State, and local information than that contained in ECHO.
Have you checked your online compliance history lately?
Because EPA manages a series of systems that include data flowing from staff in both EPA and state/tribal/local offices, it is not uncommon to find errors in your facility's compliance history. These data streams flow into the national database in many ways. For example, some states maintain their own databases, and then "translate" or upload their data sets into EPA's systems. Other states directly enter information into EPA systems, while some states provide information to EPA that EPA then loads into the systems. Given this fairly complex set of transactions, there are occasional problems with the migration of data into the databases. Additionally, it is not uncommon for the ECHO violation "switch" not to be reset to "in compliance" once a problem has been corrected by a facility.
Applicants and members interested in monitoring their EPA compliance history should visit the Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) website at www.epa.gov/echo/compliance_report.html, type in their facility name in the "Facility Name" box and hit the "search" button. After ECHO returns with the "Search Results," you can click your facility's hyperlinked name to obtain your "Detailed Facility Report." If you see an error while scrolling through this Report, you should notify the Agency about the error by clicking the "Error Report" button near the upper-right corner of your Report.
Once you have clicked an arrow, you will notice that your Report now has small green arrows on each table entry towards the right of your screen. Clicking on an arrow starts the error reporting process for data contained in that table's particular line. You will be asked for some contact information. We suggest you use e-mail as your contact method, so you can maintain a paper trail. After hitting the "Next" button, type your message into the dialog box of the "Detailed Facility Report Comment Form." We suggest that you carefully craft your comments, with special attention to specifics (Names, Dates, Permit IDs, Performance Track IDs, who did what and when, etc.), remembering your comments must travel a database food chain to the correct person to effect your changes. Be sure to keep a copy of your comments for your records. Then hit the "Submit Comment" button. You will eventually receive an email with an error report tracking number. We suggest that you also forward this email to the Performance Track help desk (ptrack@indecon.com), so we can follow the progress of your error report as well.
Performance Track Compliance Screening Criteria
Participation in the Performance Track will not be appropriate if the compliance screen shows any of the following, under federal or state law:
Criminal Activity- Corporate criminal conviction or plea for
environmentally-related violations of criminal laws
involving the corporation or a corporate officer within
the past 5 years.
- Criminal conviction or plea of employee at the same
facility for environmentally-related violations of
criminal laws within the past 5 years.
- Ongoing criminal investigation/prosecution of
corporation, corporate officer, or employee at the same
facility for violations of environmental law.
- Three or more significant violations at the
facility in the past 3 years.
- Unresolved, unaddressed Significant Non-Compliance
(SNC) or Significant Violations (SV) at the facility.
- Planned but not yet filed judicial or
administrative action at the facility.
- Ongoing EPA- or state-initiated litigation at the
facility.
- Situation where a facility is not in compliance with the schedule and terms of an order or decree.
In addition to the above criteria, EPA may also
consider whether there are significant problems or a
pattern of noncompliance in an applicant's overall civil
or criminal compliance history.
Significant Non-Compliance Overview
Overview of Significant Non-Compliance (SNC) and High
Priority Violation (HPV)
(Current as of 2/22/02)
Significant Non-Compliance (SNC) and High Priority Violation (HPV) are terms used to describe compliance status related to the violations of environmental requirements that EPA deems the most serious and that may pose a more severe level of environmental threat. The term SNC is used by the Water and RCRA Programs, while HPV is used by the Air Program.
Each EPA program uses its own program-specific criteria, based on the applicable statutes and regulations, for determining whether or not a facility is currently in SNC or HPV status. The tables below show examples of the sort of criteria, specific to each program, that could lead to these designations, and what is necessary to address or resolve SNC or HPV status.
Examples of HPV and SNC Determination
Criteria
| Clean Air Act (CAA) Program HPV | Clean Water Act (CWA) Program SNC | Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Program SNC |
|---|---|---|
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|
|
Examples of How SNC or HPV Status May Be
Addressed/Resolved
| Clean Air Act (CAA) Program HPV | Clean Water Act (CWA) Program SNC | Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Program SNC |
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
For more information on how SNC and HPV are determined and addressed or resolved, please refer to the following program guidance documents:
- Air Program - memo: Issuance of Policy on Timely and Appropriate Enforcement Response to High Priority Violations (PDF, 1.75MB) (December 22, 1998).
- Water Program - guidance: The Enforcement Management System, National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (Clean Water Act) (1989) and memos: Revision of NPDES Significant Noncompliance (SNC) Criteria to Address Violations of Non-Monthly Average Limits (September 21, 1995) and A General Design for SNC Redefinition Enhancement in PCS (December 12, 1996)
- RCRA Program - memo: A Transmittal of Addendum to the 1996 Hazardous Waste Enforcement Response Policy (PDF, 320KB) (April 25, 2000); and memo: A Hazardous Waste Civil Enforcement Response Policy (PDF, 1.15MB) (March 15, 1996)