EPA MCP Server

Public Hosted Server: https://epa.caseyjhand.com/mcp

Overview

EPA environmental data across five federal programs — facility compliance (ECHO), toxic releases (TRI), Superfund sites, drinking water systems (SDWIS), and environmental-justice screening (EJScreen) — plus real-time AirNow air quality. Pull a facility's inspection and enforcement history, track toxic releases across a region, or screen any point for environmental-justice risk.

Tools

Resources

All resource data is also reachable via tools — use epa_echo_get_facility and epa_superfund_get_site for programmatic access in tool-only MCP clients.

Related MCP server: mcp-epa-envirofacts

Capability reference

epa_echo_search_facilities tool

• Provide ZIP code, state, city (prefix match, preferably with state), county (prefix match on the recorded name; needs state), 5-digit county_fips, or latitude + longitude + radius_miles (max 100 miles). facility_name (whole words in any order, no commas; also matches other names ECHO records for the facility) and naics (2–6 digits, prefix match) narrow a geographic search

• Up to 100 facilities per call (default 50); a larger limit, up to 5,000, returns 100 with a limitNotice. Page with offset and nextOffset; totalCount is the match before limit and offset

• Returns registryId for epa_echo_get_facility, triFacilityIds for epa_tri_get_facility_releases, county and fipsCode, coordinates, per-program flags, and five-year inspection and penalty totals. effectiveQuery echoes the filters as sent

• programs takes one of CAA, CWA, RCRA, TRI, or SDWA; has_violation keeps facilities in significant noncompliance; active_only keeps facilities with an active permit

epa_echo_get_facility tool

• registry_id is a Registry ID from epa_echo_search_facilities or a program ID ECHO resolves to one: a PWSID from epa_water_search_systems, a TRI facility ID, an NPDES permit, or a RCRA handler ID. The profile carries the resolved registryId

• Returns complianceStatus, the naics codes its programs record, a per-statute programCompliance summary, five years of enforcement actions with penalties (caseId feeds epa_echo_get_case), the latest TRI total with triReleasesTransfersYear, and triFacilityIds for epa_tri_get_facility_releases

• Two paged lists: inspections from the last five years, newest first (inspections_limit default and cap 100, inspections_offset; inspectionsTotal counts them all and inspectionsNextOffset continues), and drinkingWaterViolations for a public water system, newest compliance period first, each with contaminant, measured level, MCL, status, and enforcement actions (drinking_water_violations_limit default 50, cap 200, drinking_water_violations_offset; drinkingWaterViolationsTotal and drinkingWaterViolationsNextOffset). A larger limit returns the cap with a limitNotice, and truncated is true while either list has more

• If the status lookup fails, the profile returns without complianceStatus and a notice says so; an unknown ID fails as facility_not_found

epa_echo_search_violations tool

• Requires state or zip_code; up to 100 cases per call (default 50), and a larger limit up to 5,000 returns 100 with a limitNotice. Page with offset and nextOffset; effectiveQuery echoes the filters as sent

• program filters CAA, CWA, RCRA, SDWA, CERCLA, EPCRA, FIFRA, or TSCA, matching any law a case cites; case_type is civil, criminal, or all (default)

• date_filed_start / date_filed_end (YYYY-MM-DD, inclusive) bound the filing date. Only civil cases carry filing dates, so with a date all returns civil cases with a notice, and criminal is rejected

• Returns caseId, caseName, caseType, caseStatus, enforcementOutcome, leadAgency, the primary law (programsViolated) and primarySection, federal and state/local penalties, cost recovery, compliance action and SEP costs, and filed, settlement, and closed dates. Criminal cases omit status, outcome, state/local penalty, and cost fields

• Case rows name no facility: pass a civil caseId to epa_echo_get_case

epa_echo_get_case tool

• case_id is a civil case number: a caseId from epa_echo_search_violations (such as 03-2014-7010) or a formal action's caseId from epa_echo_get_facility. A criminal CR_ number fails as criminal_case before any request; an unknown number fails as case_not_found

• Returns the case's category code, enforcement type, status, lead agency, relief sought, outcome, court and DOJ docket numbers, summary, and penalty, cost-recovery, compliance-action, and SEP totals, plus lawsAndSections, defendants, pollutants, and milestones

• facilities lists the facilities the case names, one per Registry ID, with address, NAICS and SIC codes, and the program IDs the case links; pass a registryId to epa_echo_get_facility

• enforcementConclusions lists each order, consent decree, or other settlement with its facilities, dates, penalties and costs, complying actions, pollutant reductions, and Supplemental Environmental Projects

• The report is not paged: a case naming 115 facilities and 117 settlements returns about 120 KB across both response surfaces

epa_airnow_get_conditions tool

• Provide zip_code (5 digits, or a ZIP+4 read as its first five) or both latitude and longitude; mode is current (default) or forecast

• Current mode returns each pollutant's latest hourly NowCast AQI from the closest monitor within 50 miles; forecast mode returns each issued day with dateValid, actionDay, and discussion, and forecast_date (a real YYYY-MM-DD date) keeps one day

• Readings carry categoryName and categoryNumber (1 Good–6 Hazardous); attribution marks the data preliminary and unsuitable for regulatory or enforcement decisions

• Registered only when AIRNOW_API_KEY is set; responses cache for about one hour

epa_tri_get_facility_releases tool

• facility_id is the TRI facilityId from epa_tri_search_releases or epa_echo_get_facility triFacilityIds; optional year (1987–2030) and partial chemical_name

• Returns per-chemical on-site releases to air, water, land, and underground injection, their sum totalOnSiteReleasesInLbs, and the Form R Section 8.8 oneTimeReleaseInLbs, which the media quantities already include, newest reporting year first

• limit defaults to and is capped at 500 filings; a larger value up to 5,000 returns 500 with a limitNotice. Page with offset and nextOffset; truncated, shown, cap, and guidance mark a page with more

• Quantities are in pounds; dioxin records reported in grams are converted and carry reportedUnit: "grams"

epa_tri_search_releases tool

• Requires 2-letter state (any case); optional county (case-insensitive partial match on the bare name; a trailing County, Parish, Borough, City and Borough, Census Area, or Municipality is dropped), partial chemical_name, and year; newest reporting year first when year is omitted

• Up to 200 records per call (default 50); a larger limit up to 5,000 returns 200 with a limitNotice. Page with offset and nextOffset; effectiveQuery echoes the filters as sent. Records come in reporting-year order, not ranked by quantity

• Returns facilityId for epa_tri_get_facility_releases, registryId for epa_echo_get_facility, parentCompany, and the Form R Section 8.8 oneTimeReleaseInLbs; include_release_breakdown: true adds on-site releases to air, water, land, and underground injection plus totalOnSiteReleasesInLbs, at the cost of one more upstream request (up to ~20 seconds when EPA has not cached it)

• Dioxin records reported in grams are converted to pounds and carry reportedUnit: "grams"

epa_superfund_search_sites tool

• Provide state/city/zip_code (a ZIP+4 searches its 5-digit ZIP), or latitude + longitude + radius_miles (0.1–500); up to 200 sites per call (default 50), and a larger limit up to 5,000 returns 200 with a limitNotice. Page with offset and nextOffset; effectiveQuery echoes the filters as sent

• Returns site identifiers, location, raw NPL code and source label, plus sparse non-NPL assessment, archive, EPA ID, and federal facility metadata. npl_status filters listed (F/A), not-listed (N), proposed (P), deleted (D), removed (R), withdrawn (W), or all (default)

• exclude_archived: true requires SEMS archived_ind=N before pagination or proximity selection; the default retains all archive statuses. Assessment labels do not describe cleanup progress

• Administrative searches return sites in SEMS site ID order and carry no totalCount, since DMAP reports no match count; follow nextOffset

• Proximity searches rescan every latitude/longitude candidate on each call, apply exact distance, and page the nearest-first order (site ID breaks ties). totalCount is the number of matching sites, and a notice gives the page's place in it ("Showing sites a–b of N") and says sites without coordinates cannot be located. All candidate pages share a 50-second deadline — narrow the radius or add filters if it times out

epa_superfund_get_site tool

• Provide a site_id from epa_superfund_search_sites, preserving leading zeros

• Returns { site, contaminants }: site metadata plus every recorded contaminant association, including medium, operable unit, action, and type code when available. Repeated chemicals and duplicate source rows are retained

• An existing site with no associations returns contaminants: []; a missing site returns NotFound. Site and paged contaminant reads share one 50-second deadline; upstream failures remain errors

• Associations describe EPA action/media records, not current exposure, concentrations, or current risk

epa_water_search_systems tool

• Requires state (a 2-letter code, or an EPA region code 01–10 for tribal systems) or zip_code; up to 200 systems per call (default 50) in PWSID order, and a larger limit up to 5,000 returns 200 with a limitNotice. Page with offset and nextOffset; totalCount appears when the call saw the whole match; effectiveQuery echoes the filters as sent

• zip_code matches each system's address of record by prefix, so stored ZIP+4s match, and not its service area. county (needs state) finds the systems serving a county: a trailing County, Parish, Borough, City and Borough, Census Area, or Municipality is dropped, and a system matches only when one county it serves is that county, so Harris does not match Harrison

• has_violation keeps systems with a current SDWA violation in ECHO, which applies EPA's Enforcement Response Policy and so flags fewer systems than SDWIS's unresolved violation records; pws_type is community, non-transient, or transient, returned as CWS / NTNCWS / TNCWS in type; active_only keeps systems SDWIS lists as active

• A ZIP or county has_violation check reads up to 1,000 systems per call; when that fills before the page does, a notice says so and nextOffset continues

• Pass a returned pwsid as registry_id to epa_echo_get_facility for the system's drinking-water violations

epa_ejscreen_get_scores tool

• Requires latitude and longitude; distance defaults to 1, unit to miles (kilometers accepted); buffer capped at 15 miles

• Returns 13 environmental and 6 demographic indicators with national/state percentiles, plus the demographicIndex and supplementalDemographicIndex, each with its usAverage. Both indexes are unitless, shifted means of z-scores, not percentages; an indicator's ejIndex is the Demographic Index × its US percentile, population-weighted over the buffer

• coverage.valid: false with a note when the point is outside EJAM's bounds (the 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Island Areas; no request is made), the buffer holds no Census block (a larger distance may help below 15 miles), or its blocks have no residents (state, population, and block-group count are kept)

• Data is EJAM's ACS 2018–2022 release of EJScreen (EJScreen 2.3 method), served by the community-maintained EJAM API (Public Environmental Data Partners)

epa://facility/{registry_id} resource

• registry_id is a Registry ID from epa_echo_search_facilities or a program ID ECHO resolves to one, such as a PWSID from epa_water_search_systems

• Returns the epa_echo_get_facility compliance profile at its default pages of inspections and drinking-water violations (inspectionsNextOffset and drinkingWaterViolationsNextOffset mark more; page them with the tool); errors when no facility resolves

epa://superfund/{site_id} resource

• site_id comes from epa_superfund_search_sites

• Returns the same data as epa_superfund_get_site, with site fields at the top level and an additive contaminants array; errors when no SEMS record resolves

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core: stdio and Streamable HTTP transports, pluggable auth (none / jwt / oauth), swappable storage (in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1), structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing.

EPA-specific:

• One epa_ tool surface over ECHO (facility compliance), Envirofacts DMAP (TRI, Superfund, SDWIS), AirNow (air quality), and the community-maintained EJAM API (EJScreen, ACS 2018–2022)

• AirNow responses cache for about one hour to stay within per-key rate limits

• TRI reporting lags about 18 months; the latest reporting year is typically two years behind

Agent-friendly output:

• Search results carry the IDs the next tool needs: registryId, fipsCode, facilityId, triFacilityIds, caseId, and pwsid

• Every search pages with offset and nextOffset, and epa_echo_get_facility pages its inspections and drinking-water violations with inspections_offset and drinking_water_violations_offset; a limit above a tool's cap, up to 5,000, returns the cap with a limitNotice

• Searches return effectiveQuery, the filters as the server sent them upstream, so a result states what it matched

• epa_echo_get_facility returns a partial profile with a notice when the status lookup fails

• Empty searches return a message that suggests how to broaden them

Getting started

Public Hosted Instance

A public instance is available at https://epa.caseyjhand.com/mcp — no installation required. It runs without an AirNow key, so epa_airnow_get_conditions is not available there; the other 10 tools are. Point any MCP client at it via Streamable HTTP:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "epa-mcp-server": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://epa.caseyjhand.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Self-Hosted / Local

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file. An AirNow API key is optional — set AIRNOW_API_KEY to enable epa_airnow_get_conditions (register free at docs.airnowapi.org); without it the server starts with the other 10 tools. ECHO, DMAP, and EJScreen tools work without authentication.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "epa-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@cyanheads/epa-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info",
        "AIRNOW_API_KEY": "your-airnow-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with npx (no Bun required):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "epa-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/epa-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info",
        "AIRNOW_API_KEY": "your-airnow-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "epa-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "-i", "--rm",
        "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio",
        "-e", "AIRNOW_API_KEY=your-airnow-key",
        "ghcr.io/cyanheads/epa-mcp-server:latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

For Streamable HTTP, set the transport and start the server:

MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http MCP_HTTP_PORT=3010 AIRNOW_API_KEY=... bun run start:http
# Server listens at http://localhost:3010/mcp

Prerequisites

• Bun v1.4.0 or higher (or Node.js v24+); development and Docker use Bun v1.4.4.

• (Optional) An AirNow API key to enable epa_airnow_get_conditions — register free at docs.airnowapi.org/account/request. Without it the server runs the other 10 tools. ECHO, DMAP, and EJScreen tools require no API key.

Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/epa-mcp-server.git

2. Navigate into the directory:

cd epa-mcp-server

3. Install dependencies:

bun install

4. Configure environment:

cp .env.example .env
# optionally set AIRNOW_API_KEY to enable the air quality tool

Configuration

All configuration is validated at startup via Zod schemas in src/config/. Key environment variables:

See .env.example for the full list of optional overrides.

Running the server

Local development

• Build and run:

  # One-time build
  bun run rebuild
  
  # Run the built server
  bun run start:stdio
  # or
  bun run start:http

• Run checks and tests:

  bun run devcheck   # Lint, format, typecheck, security
  bun run test       # Vitest test suite
  bun run lint:mcp   # Validate MCP definitions against spec

Docker

docker build -t epa-mcp-server .
docker run --rm -e AIRNOW_API_KEY=your-key -p 3010:3010 epa-mcp-server

The Dockerfile defaults to HTTP transport, stateless session mode, and logs to /var/log/epa-mcp-server. OpenTelemetry peer dependencies are installed by default — build with --build-arg OTEL_ENABLED=false to omit them.

Project structure

Development guide

See CLAUDE.md for development guidelines and architectural rules. The short version:

• Handlers throw, framework catches — no try/catch in tool logic

• Use ctx.log for request-scoped logging, ctx.state for tenant-scoped storage

• Register new tools and resources via the barrels in src/mcp-server/*/definitions/index.ts

• Wrap external API calls: validate raw → normalize to domain type → return output schema; never fabricate missing fields

• ECHO searches must enforce at least one geographic parameter — unscoped queries time out against the live API

Contributing

Issues are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.