Facility Registry System (FRS)

The issue

States and EPA's Program Offices and Regions, have always collected information about facilities subject to environmental regulation or of environmental interest. EPA created the Facility Registry System (FRS) to respond to the need for a central repository of facility information. However, because FRS collected facility information from many sources, the information in the system was inaccurate.

The solution

EPA began an improvement strategy, using the Exchange Network to exchange and improve the accuracy and quality of the information within the FRS, a national database of information on facilities subject to environmental regulation. FRS uses the Exchange Network to collect and store key facility identifying information, such as: facility names, alternate facility names, geographic locations (street addresses and latitude and longitude), mailing addresses, points of contact, permit and system identification numbers, industrial codes, and parent organizational structures. FRS is publicly accessible through Envirofacts, where the public can access information on over 1.5 million records from more than a dozen program systems and three dozen states. Additionally, EPA receives correction and verification information from the reporting community via Web-based access and through information exchange supported by the Exchange Network.

The benefits

FRS is critical to EPA's efforts of providing the public with access to high quality environmental information. The FRS database supports key EPA public access tools, such as the Envirofacts Data Warehouse, EnviroMapper, and Environmental Compliance History Online (ECHO) web sites, as well as the Integrated Compliance Information System (ICIS).

EPA is utilizing the Exchange Network to further improve, enhance and expand FRS. Currently, between 5- 40 states are now developing Nodes to automate exchange of facility data with EPA via the Exchange Network. This increases the amount of information, including increasing the locational data, which supports Geographical Information System (GIS) mapping applications throughout the Agency.

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