Water Pollution Monitoring

GAO reviewed the capabilities of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Permit Compliance System, a computer system that helps regulate the more than 64,000 facilities that are discharging pollutants into U.S. navigable waters. This report discusses (1) whether the system can maintain various data elements and perform analyses; (2) whether EPA assessed any alternative technologies to the existing data entry process; (3) how many facilities in the system, particularly minor facilities, have detailed data; (4) what the estimated resource expenditures for minor facility data entry and update are; and (5) what the system's approximate operating costs are.

GAO found that: (1) PCS enables EPA to monitor and track compliance of permitted National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) facilities; (2) PCS is not fully utilized by all states because it is not user-friendly; (3) of the 64,227 NPDES facilities, 7,139 major facilities and 21,187 minor facilities currently utilize PCS for detailed data entry; (4) EPA is currently considering such new technologies such as optical character recognition and electronic data interchange to facilitate more efficient data entry, but needs to perform cost-benefit analyses and compare these technologies with alternative systems; (5) currently 76 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees are required to enter detailed data for the 21,187 minor facilities, with an estimated 109 FTE needed to enter data for the remaining facilities; and (6) operating costs for PCS in fiscal year 1991, including state data entry costs, totalled about $5.9 million.