What is the Environmental Trending Dashboard?
The Environmental Trending Dashboard (ETD) empowers users to monitor, track, and analyze the regulatory performance of both public and private industrial facilities across the United States that have not recorded a wastewater discharge violation across the past three yearly quarters.
Through the ETD, users gain insight into facilities that might be approaching non-compliance, offering a predictive view of potential future violations. Additionally, this dashboard provides information on a facility's MGD (Million Gallons per Day) capacity usage percentage. This field displays the current percentage of a facility's permitted design capacity in active use.
Key Terms
NPDES ID
The NPDES ID is a unique identifier assigned to the facility by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Facility Type
The facility type column indicates the ownership of the facility. Publicly owned treatment works (POTW) are facilities owned by public entities, whereas non-publicly owned treatment works (NON-POTW) are facilities owned by private entities.
Year / Quarter
Discharges in the ETD are grouped together by Yearly Quarter. This grouping method provides a broad overview of discharge trends over extended periods rather than showcasing individual sample results.
Design Flow
The permitted capacity of the facility.
Average Flow
The average MGD reported by the facility.
Pollutant
The specific contaminant measured within a wastewater discharge sample from an EPA-permitted facility.
Measurement Units
The measurement units are the units of volume used for the wastewater discharge sample.
Limit Value
The reported value is the amount of the pollutant measured within the facility’s wastewater discharge.
Measurement Type
The categorization of discharge test measurements. "MIN," "AVG," "MAX," or "TTL" signifies the smallest, average, largest, or total values respectively, derived from sample measurements collected during a reporting period.
MGD Capacity Usage %
MGD Capacity Usage % is calculated by dividing Average Flow by Design Flow. When this percentage nears or surpasses 100%, it suggests that the facility might require an upgrade to expand its capacity.
Average Reporting Value
The average pollutant level that was recorded across all sample tests collected in a quarter.
2 Quarter Increase
The 2 Quarter Increase data field indicates if the facility has experienced two consecutive quarterly average reporting value increases for a particular pollutant. The purpose of this field is to indicate the current regulatory trend of a facility. If the average reported value of a pollutant is increasing, it may indicate the desire to implement a treatment solution.
Limit Usage %
Limit Usage % is a comparison of Average Reporting Value to Limit Value. A value of greater than 100% indicates that the reported value quarterly average exceeded the limit value. However, in the ETD, all averages will be below 100% as the dashboard only shows facilities currently in compliance.
Limit Usage % by Year/Quarter (Visual Chart)
The Limit Usage % by Year/Quarter represents the percentage of total quarterly average reporting values in relation to their corresponding limit values. It showcases the compliance level for a specific quarter and serves the purpose of visually illustrating a facility's trend regarding its compliance levels.
What is the Difference Between the Discharge Overview Table and the Quarterly Average Discharges Table?
The Quarterly Average Discharges table contains a breakdown of average reporting values for a facility across yearly quarters. In contrast, the Discharge Overview table centralizes average reporting values across the past three quarters.
A recommended workflow is to first look at the Discharge Overview table to identify an interesting facility. Next, select that row to see the associated quarterly averages found in the Quarterly Average Discharges table.