40 kinds of defect in the government's files · live counts as of Oct 29, 2026
Every government database we monitor is wrong somewhere: it contradicts another agency's file or its own, carries one record twice, writes a date that is not a date, reloads itself overnight, or leaves a column blank that a report depends on. None of it is in the agencies' documentation. This page lists every kind we have found so far — what it looks like in the file, how big it is, and what we do about it — so you can see what a nightly check has to get right before a single alert is worth reading. One rule stands under all of it: we track the government's own records, one by one, and never keep a version of our own, so a change we report is always theirs.
Where the database holds a live count, the number under an entry is today's; where our nightly run counts it, it is that night's, dated; otherwise it is the count as measured on the day stated. The systems themselves are described on Data Sources & Methodology; what each night's check found is on the Nightly Log.
Two government records about the same permit or site that say different things — or one record that contradicts itself.
EPA's permit file and EPA's facility file disagree about tens of thousands of sites: the permit is in force, the site is marked inactive. We record each one as a disagreement between two government records and watch it every night until the files agree.
On file since Sep 20, 2026
Tens of thousands of permits are listed as effective past their own expiration date with no termination on file — the record contradicts itself. Every one is flagged on the facility's page and watched nightly. 'Administratively continued', EPA's term for a permit legally continued during renewal, is stated as a fact, never flagged.
On file since Aug 23, 2026
For thousands of permits and registrations, the state's registry and EPA's file disagree about whether they are in force. We compare every matched id each week, name both records, link both pages, and count the conflict in each direction.
On file since Aug 16, 2026
A permit the state renewed years ago can still show its old expiration date in EPA's file, so a federal search reads it as expired. We compare the two dates for every permit both files hold and report the ones more than a month apart, with both dates.
On file since Oct 11, 2026
The state's registry and EPA's file often name the holder of one permit differently — a different operator, a renamed site, or just a spelling. We tell the substantive differences (a different company) from the cosmetic ones (INC against INCORPORATED) and report only the substantive ones as findings.
On file since Aug 17, 2026
Permits and registrations in Texas, California, Pennsylvania and Florida that one government lists and the other's file has no record of, counted both ways. A permit the state issued in the last six months shows as awaiting federal registration; after that it is missing.
On file since Aug 16, 2026
California's stormwater file holds far more violations and enforcement actions than EPA's file has for the same facilities, citations for operating without a permit among them. We carry the state's own records beside the federal ones.
On file since Aug 16, 2026
Files that carry the same permit, violation or site more than once. We show every value the rows hold; nothing of ours chooses a row, so a change in our reading is always the government's.
EPA's hazardous-waste violation file carries no violation number, so two violations of one kind found at one site on one day share a record; 83,769 records are like that, and 45,301 of them mix open and closed violations. We show such a record as open while any violation in it is open, post each return to compliance on its own, and say '1 of 2 still open'.
On file since Sep 20, 2026
EPA's file often carries one hazardous-waste violation twice, differing only in its scheduled compliance date or the agency that found it — 42,170 violations on the file of Sep 20, 2026. We show every schedule and agency the file carries, so a restatement that adds nothing changes nothing.
On file since Sep 20, 2026
EPA's water-permit file keeps a row for every version of a permit, and the versions disagree — 20,551 Texas and California permits read Expired in one row and Effective in another. We read the latest version, every time, and compare that one with the state's file.
On file since Aug 14, 2026
The permit file can carry one version of a permit twice with different issue dates (permit VAG409322 did, from Aug 26 to Sep 14, 2026). We show both dates in the record rather than pick one, and a check fails the nightly run if any record starts swinging between two values.
On file since Sep 22, 2026
California's stormwater system files the same violation or inspection under two permit numbers when a site holds an industrial permit and a no-exposure certification — 2,547 violations and 1,778 inspections on the files of Sep 21, 2026. We show both numbers on the record rather than pick one.
On file since Sep 23, 2026
EPA's corrective-action table can carry the same milestone twice with two dates, one entered by EPA and one by the state — 3,569 milestones do. We show both dates on the record.
On file since Sep 23, 2026
EPA's files can hold two actions of the same kind against one permit on one day that differ only in the penalty, and two inspections that differ only in whether a violation was found — 8,700 such pairs across the water, air and hazardous-waste files. Each one is its own posting on our side, so a second action on the same day is never lost inside the first.
On file since Sep 23, 2026
Texas's Central Registry lists 107,983 permit and registration ids under more than one facility name. We keep every name the registry lists, the current affiliation's first, and report a disagreement only when EPA's name matches none of them.
On file since Sep 20, 2026
A permit can sit under two registered entities in Texas's registry when it changes hands. We link it to one, carry the active status, and date the registration from its earliest affiliation.
On file since Aug 16, 2026
EPA's National Priorities List service can return one site more than once with different listing dates. We keep the newest listing by the calendar.
On file since Sep 20, 2026
Sentinel values, six date formats, typo years, and records published months after the event.
Texas's registry writes 'Jan 01, 1800' for a date it does not know and 'Dec 31, 3000' for an affiliation that has not ended. We read both as what they mean — a registration is never shown as begun in 1800 or ending in the year 3000.
On file since Aug 19, 2026
EPA's water and waste files write 05/04/2025; its air file writes 05-04-2025; Texas writes 'May 4, 2025'; California mixes dates with the word 'NaN' and, in one feed, epoch milliseconds beside plain text; the Coast Guard's older spill files store a date as a spreadsheet serial number. Each is read by its own rule, so a date is never dropped or misread.
On file since Aug 14, 2026
Government files carry typo years — a stormwater violation dated 3013, case milestones dated 1900. Records outside a sane range are set aside rather than printed as history.
On file since Aug 16, 2026
Water compliance records reach EPA's files 60 to 90 days after the event, and some post months late (a May determination posted Sep 7, 2026). We alert the night a record posts and print both dates, so nothing is missed because it was old the day it appeared.
On file since Aug 13, 2026
Files about the same facility that share no identifier, placeholder ids, and one site under two government numbers.
OSHA inspections live in the Department of Labor's files under the employer's name and address, with no EPA id. We match them to facilities by name and address in four confidence tiers; only the two strongest count on a report's first page, and the rest are shown as possible matches with the evidence.
On file since Aug 17, 2026
The Coast Guard's spill hotline records the company that called and the address given, with no facility id. We attach a report to a facility only when it is a fixed site or a storage tank and the name and address match, and we print the report as the caller's account — never as a violation.
On file since Aug 26, 2026
EPA's federal enforcement docket attaches 7,156 unrelated cases to one Illinois gravel pit's id. We never attribute a case through an id that carries more than a thousand of them, so no facility inherits a docket that is not its own.
On file since Aug 23, 2026
The same site often appears under two government numbers — EPA's and the state's, or two of EPA's own with the street written differently. We join the twins by address and by a shared permit id, print them as one site, and say which other registration the site carries.
On file since Aug 20, 2026
Some state registries write the federal permit number on the registration (California's hazardous-waste registry, most Texas wastewater permits); others write a state number that exists nowhere federally (California stormwater). We compare where the id is shared and match by name and address where it is not, and we say which was used.
On file since Aug 16, 2026
Agencies reload entire files, retract records, and re-publish last year's data; a vanished record is not an event.
Agencies restate entire files: 400,410 West Virginia discharge-report records vanished in one night in August 2026 when the state cleared a backlog. We hold a night that changes more than a fifth of a file for a person to review, and never treat a reload as ten thousand events.
On file since Aug 16, 2026
Records leave government files with no public notice. We keep every one with the dates we saw it appear and disappear, and a report says 'removed from the public record between our observations' rather than showing nothing.
On file since Aug 13, 2026
When a citation is retracted after a contest, the Department of Labor marks it deleted rather than removing it. We record the retraction as a change with its date, so a report shows that a citation was issued and later withdrawn.
On file since Aug 17, 2026
The Coast Guard re-published its 2025 spill file in May 2026, and re-publications fill in fields on old reports — 283 incident dates at one refinery in a single night. We reload the current and the previous year every night and report a flood of one field as one line, not 283.
On file since Aug 24, 2026
Fields that move on their own and edits the agency undoes weeks later.
EPA's facility file counts the days since each site's last inspection, so three million records change every night without anything happening. Those fields are recorded and never reported as changes.
On file since Aug 13, 2026
EPA restates a coordinate or a spelling and restates it back weeks later — 761 records did in one month. We record both edits as the government's, and a check fails our own nightly run if any record swings between two values more often than an agency ever does.
On file since Sep 22, 2026
A 'violation' that is a late report, a status word that does not end a case, a designation being lifted that reads like the designation.
Nine in ten of the water 'violations' in EPA's files are a report that was late or not filed, filed under the same word as a measured exceedance of a permit limit. We classify every violation at intake and never blend the two: a report says '114 violations (12 exceedances)'.
On file since Aug 14, 2026
EPA's hazardous-waste file records which rule was broken and never whether it was a paperwork lapse or a substantive one. We print the rule and never guess the severity in either direction.
On file since Aug 14, 2026
EPA's record that a site is no longer a significant non-complier contains the words 'significant non-complier'. We read the lifting as good news and the designation as bad, and the alert says which.
On file since Sep 14, 2026
A federal enforcement case ends only when EPA marks it Closed, Concluded or Superseded; 'Compliance Achieved' means the obligations were met and the case is still open. We count a case as open on the government's own words and print those words.
On file since Aug 23, 2026
Columns shipped empty, codes padded with spaces, placeholders in place of nulls, registrations without a date, map pins missing or wrong.
The Department of Labor's archive has a column for whether a state agency or federal OSHA did the inspection, and leaves it blank on every row. We name the agency from the state's own program — Cal/OSHA in California, federal OSHA in Texas — so a report says where an appeal goes.
On file since Sep 9, 2026
RCRAInfo pads its 'violation found' flag with spaces, so a reader that looks for a plain Y sees none of the 382,130 inspections that found a violation. We read the padded value, and those inspections post as violations found.
On file since Sep 23, 2026
EPA's facility file carries no registration dates, and the state registries date most registrations but not all. Where the government gives a date we print it; where it does not, we print a dash — never the day we happened to first see the record.
On file since Aug 19, 2026
State registrations rarely carry coordinates, and EPA's pins are sometimes a county or two away. Facilities without a pin are listed under the map rather than left off it, and a pin the government placed two hundred miles out is shown as it is, not corrected by us.
On file since Sep 1, 2026
Found one we have not?
Government files change, and so does this list. Email the facility name, the registry id and what looks wrong to contact@ehsrecon.com — a person reads every one, and a new kind of defect becomes a rule, a test and an entry here.
