A sewer overflow reaches the public record twice: once when the utility reports it to its state, and once when somebody has to reassemble that history before scoping the repair work. EPA republishes the first. This page is about what the republished version supports.
What the record holds, for one permit
The collection system name as the permittee reported it, the count of filed events, and the first and last dates filed. Every figure is the permittee’s own report to its state program, shown with the permit number a reader needs to check it.
Two more columns sit beside it: whether EPA’s national inventory lists combined-sewer outfalls against the same permit and how many, and whether a federal civil enforcement case names that permit.
Where the figures come from
EPA’s sewer overflow and bypass event tables, retrieved on 15 September 2026. A 1,088,677 byte download holding 5,248 filed events under 675 permits, dated between 2019-09-24 and 2026-09-22, and 4,082 collection systems under 4,036 permits.
Those are counts of rows in that download. They are not a national count of overflows. What reaches the download depends on what each state requires a utility to report.
A worked example
The bytes of EPA’s download are not stored here. The fetch record keeps its size and its checksum, so the reader that builds these records runs against example files. One example permit comes out like this:
| permit | XX0000001 |
| collection system as filed | Example Regional Water Reclamation Authority |
| filed events | 3 |
| first filed | 2024-11-19 |
| last filed | 2026-01-07 |
| combined-sewer outfalls listed | 2 |
What is not here
No volume
An event can carry a discharge volume, and many of the 5,248 do. How many is not stated here. The fetch record holds the download’s size, its event count and its date range, and it holds no count of the events that carry a volume, so nothing on this page would let a reader check such a figure. Whether the states measure and require those volumes on the same terms is unsettled either way. A volume is read and stored, and it is not published.
No rate, and no national total
A rate needs pipe miles, connections or population for one collection system, and none of the three are in this download. The unit of everything above is one named collection system with a countable number of filed events.