Final Order The Final Order is a very important section that must be completed. In this area, you will put the issuance date, and the requirements that the facility has to meet. This is a product of the ICIS Customer Support Team. For more information, please contact us at icis@epa.gov

In most cases, you will only have one final order, but you may also have multiple Final Orders per Enforcement Action. You could have multiple facilities included on the enforcement action. You could create a different final order for each facility. The benefits are you could have different compliance schedule requirements and different penalty amounts for each facility. To add a Final Order, click on Add Final Order.

Final Order Basic ICIS will automatically select the facility that was linked to this action, all you have to do is click “Next”.

Final Order Basic Notice the Final Order “Type” is a required field. Make your selection from the pull down menu. Also, the Federal Statutes Violated is automatically populated for NPDES Users – Clean Water Act. You must select the “Law Sections violated. You can multi-select in this field by holding down the Ctrl button. It is very important to enter the Final Order Issued Date. You can add respondents, QNCR comments, or other comments. Any comments can be released to the public. We recommend that you choose “Save and Continue” so you can enter the additional information required by the Order.

Final Order Basic Let’s talk about some of the dates on the right hand side. As we mentioned, it is very important that the Final Order Issued Date is entered into ICIS. It is important for resolution on the Quarterly Non-Compliance Report that a NPDES Closed Date is entered when the action has been closed and all the requirements of the Order have been met or superseded by another enforcement action. If you closed the enforcement action under the Milestone hyperlink, then this date will be automatically populated for you. The other 3 date fields are available for your use, but not usually filled out for state actions. Until you close out an action, any violations displayed on the QNCR that are Resolved Pending will remain on the report for years until you close out your action in the database.

Final Order Basic You will be able to tell where you are in a couple of ways. First is the breadcrumbs, and then the other way is the Enforcement Action Tab is dark blue, the Final Order is not underlined, and then you will see an additional menu that is unique to the Final Order, such as Penalty, Sep, Compliance Schedule, etc. We will be discussing each one of the hyperlinks now.

Penalty To add a Penalty, select the “penalty” hyperlink. Then click on the Add Penalty link on the right of the screen.

Penalty You should enter the CWA penalty amount, State/Local Agency amount (which would most likely be the same amount). In addition, you can track how much of the penalty has been paid to date by the Total Penalty Collected field. We are going to skip Cost Recovery as that applies to CERCLA and RCRA, not NPDES.

Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) The Supplemental Environmental Project (SEP) screen is used when an alleged violator voluntarily agrees to undertake an environmentally beneficial project related to the violation in exchange for mitigation of the penalty to be paid. A Supplement Environmental Project (SEP) furthers EPA's goal of protecting and enhancing the public health and the environment. It does not include the activities a violator must take to return to compliance with the law.

Complying Action / Injunctive Relief The complying action/injunctive relief is optional for the states. EPA currently uses this area to track the amount of environmental benefits we expect from this enforcement action. We use this information to report to Congress and the public at end of year.

Compliance Schedule Because it is very important that you add at least one Compliance Schedule event for formal actions that are not penalty only, we will show you how to enter a couple of compliance schedule events. In order for any linked violations to change to resolved pending on the QNCR, you must enter the issue date of the formal action, at least one compliance schedule event and link the violations cited in the order to this enforcement action. Select the Add Schedule hyperlink.

Compliance Schedule ICIS will provide a list of NPDES permit numbers that have been linked to this enforcement action. Click next.

Compliance Schedule You must decide if the compliance schedule event you are going to enter is recurring (such as every quarter for 2 years) or non-recurring (such as begin construction on a specific date). We will enter one of each. I will enter the non-recurring event first for “achieve compliance with all the obligations for this Order” by Jan. 31, 2012. Click on the “Non-recurring Event” button and then for the Schedule Event which is required, click on the Select button.

Compliance Schedule A pop up list will appear and you must make your selection from the list. Notice the full description will not fit in the box, but once you click on the event, a yellow box will appear with the entire description. Unfortunately there is no search available on this screen similar to the Narrative Conditions. You could go over to narrative conditions and search, then come back to this screen or you could have a list available on a Share directory for everyone to use. You can request additional schedule events if you find that this list does not meet your needs.

Compliance Schedule You must enter a scheduled date. Be sure to save your record. Since we are going to add another event, select Save and Continue.

Compliance Schedule Note that the event is now saved and if you need to edit the Achieve final compliance to enter the received and actual date, you can select the hyperlink . Select “Add Event”. A message may appear that you are about to leave this screen, you may lose data if you do not save first - Select ok.

Compliance Schedule The Recurring Event entered is for a Progress report, notice it is under Status on the list. You are required to enter a schedule start date. We entered 4/1/2011. The frequency is also required, and we selected quarterly. Then you have to decide on a duration. You can enter the number of occurrences, such as I’m expecting 10 progress reports, or you can enter an End Date. We entered Dec 31, 2013 which is when they are suppose to meet all the requirements in this Order. Be sure to save your schedule event.

Compliance Schedule Notice multiple progress reports have been created. I’m not showing the entire list. In addition, you will be able to see any compliance schedule events that are in violation.

Enforcement Action Limits The next hyperlink is Enforcement Action Limits. If your Order contains limits, you can enter them here. Select Enf. Act Limits.

Enforcement Action Limits Make the selection of what limit set you need to add the enforcement action limit by select the radio button to the left of the limit set and then select limits.

Enforcement Action Limits Select the radio button for the parameter that will have a new limit and select the “Add Enf Action”

Enforcement Action Limits Several fields will default to the permit limits, such as the parameter code, monitoring location, season id, sample type, frequency of analysis, unit codes and statistical base codes. You will need to enter the limits as they are stated in the enforcement action.

NPDES Violations NPDES Violations – This area is used for Linking violations to your enforcement action. When violations are linked in the Final Order, they will resolve pending the individual violations displayed on the Quarterly Noncompliance Report. Once the enforcement action is closed, the violations that are linked on this screen will automatically change to resolved. Linking violations will be discussed next.

Linking Enforcement Actions Locate your Formal Enforcement Action.

Linking Enforcement Actions Click on the NPDES Violations tab. The first step is to search for all the violations to link to your enforcement action. There is a business rule to prevent you from linking violations that occur after the issuance date of the enforcement action. Review your enforcement action and then click on “Search to Link”

Linking Enforcement Actions You should use the Violation Search Criteria screen to narrow down the violations that you need to link to this action. For instance, there are violations in the database for this facility beginning in 1998 and there are over 500 violations. My action only addressed violations for the months of January and February 2011.

Add Formal Enforcement Action My action only addressed violations for the months of January and February 2011. Notice it was not necessary to enter the NPDES ID since I was in an enforcement action linked to this permit number. I entered a range or Jan. 1, 2011 thru March 30, 2011.

Linking Enforcement Actions Each value field could have a violation. For instance if you have a quantity average, concentration average, and concentration maximum requirement for BOD, you may have 3 individual fields here with violations. You have the option to “Select All” in the top left corner, and a message will appear to ask you to confirm. Or you can review the list of violations that met your criteria and randomly click on the check box to the left of each violation. The system was designed so you could link violations linked to a proposed Order, but would not have to link these violations to the Final Order if the decision was made to drop the violations from the Final Order. That is why it is important to go to step 2 to complete the linking on formal enforcement actions.

Linking Enforcement Actions I selected several violations to link to my enforcement action. Now I need to do Step 2.

Linking Enforcement Actions For Step 2, click back on the Enforcement Action Tab, click on the Final Order Hyperlink, get into the Final Order, and click on the NPDES Violations hyperlink. Then click Link violations.

Linking Enforcement Actions Only a list of the violations that were linked in Step 1 will appear. You can put a check mark in the Select All box and then click Link violations. If there are numerous violations, all will be linked when you select all. You will have to confirm that you agree all will be affected by this link operation. Click ok. If you need to add more violations, you can easily do this by repeating steps 1 and 2. You can also unlink violations.

Closing Enforcement Action Remember it is important to Close your enforcement action. The easiest way is to click on the Milestone hyperlink, click on the Enforcement Action Closed hyperlink and enter the actual closed date. This is very important for resolution of violations on the QNCR.

ICIS Customer Support at (202) 564-7756 or icis@epa.gov If further assistance is required please contact Your Assigned System Administrator or ICIS Customer Support at (202) 564-7756 or icis@epa.gov THANK YOU! If you need further assistance please contact the your System Administrator or the ICIS helpline at (202) 564-7756 or at icis@epa.gov