The new Pollutant Loading Tool can now be accessed on the Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) website. The water pollutant tool calculates pollutant loadings from permit and DMR data and offers a variety of ways to customize searches. Pollutant loadings are presented as pounds per year and as toxic-weighted pounds per year to account for variations in toxicity among pollutants.

The tool also ranks dischargers, industries, and watersheds based on pollutant mass and toxicity, and presents “top ten” lists to help you determine which discharges are important, which facilities and industries are producing these discharges, and which watersheds are impacted.

The tool also includes wastewater pollutant discharge data from EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Data are available for the years 2007 to the most recent reporting year. Users can search TRI data to find the facilities with the largest water pollutant discharges to surface waters or sewage treatment plants (a.k.a. Publicly Owned Treatment Works or “POTWs”). Users can also compare the DMR data search results against TRI data search results and vice versa. The tool clearly labels the source of data when displaying search results.

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