Electronic Reporting

​Frequently Asked Questions

Beginning January 1, 2013, all Certified Unified Program Agencies (CUPAs) and regulated facilities in Sacramento County are required by law to submit their Hazardous Materials Business Plan (HMP) electronically by creating an account on the California Environmental Reporting System (CERS).

No, it does not. For businesses, Electronic Reporting requires that a business uses the CERS (California Environmental Reporting System) Business Portal  to fulfill its reporting requirement.

All regulated facilities and CUPAs in the State of California must be filing and accepting all included data completely as of January 1, 2013. Please look for a letter to arrive from EMD prior to your due date that will explain the login process for the electronic submission.​​

No.  Effective December 15, 2015, the EMD Portal will be available in a read-only format.  EMD has transitioned away from the local e-reporting portal to go solely to CERS, so new businesses are required to submit their plans through the CERS website.​​

Not necessarily. The data item has to be defined in the data dictionary in CCR Title 27 in order for it to be a required part of the statewide data management system. There are a number of business plan requirements other than filling out forms. For example:

  • While the inventory portion of the business plan has owner/operator and chemical inventory forms included in the data dictionary, the Emergency Response Plans and Procedures and Training parts of the plan do not have a specific form and are not included. However, some documents such as site maps and locally collected information forms will be able to be scanned and uploaded.
  • Risk Management Plans (RMPs) do have specific required data elements in CCR Title 19. However they are not defined in CCR Title 27; therefore RMPs are not included in CERS.
  • Records maintained onsite to demonstrate compliance are not included.
  • The statewide system does not manage local agency billing, acceptance of payments, or issuance of permits. The extent to which additional billing information is required is dependent on local fee structures and the use of limited locally collected inventory information in the statewide information system.

Our CUPA staff will help you identify how to file or maintain that required compliance documentation which is not part of the CCR Title 27 data dictionary and therefore not part of the statewide information system.

The statewide data system will allow:

  • Regulated facilities to more easily update existing information.
  • Multi-jurisdictional businesses to file their data using one system location.
  • Emergency response agencies access to current data.
  • Federal, State, and local regulators to have more efficient access to current data.
  • Saving of space, paper, and time involved in physical processing and reentering of data already typed into a form by the business.

If you are a new business please visit the CERS website at http://cers.calepa.ca.gov/ to get started.​

Each individual jurisdiction has its own unique manual, automated, and emergency information systems.

If you have facilities in more than one jurisdiction, you will need to check the reporting requirement of each jurisdiction.  If you have a large number of sites, we suggest that you contact CalEPA about multi-jurisdiction filing options prior to manually entering your data for each site. If you have just a few sites but they are scattered among jurisdictions, you will want to contact each jurisdiction. CalEPA does not have a specific interested party list for e-reporting, but they use their more general Unified Program listserv.

To join the listserv, you can go to: CalEPA Listservs | CalEPA​

Sacramento County EMD offers webinars, email, and phone assistance for businesses.

Sacramento County EMD staff is able to assist businesses by appointment. Call us at (916) 875-2377 or email emd-e-reporting@s​accounty.gov​ ​ to set up an appointment or to sign up for a webinar.

The Sacramento County Public Libraries offer free internet access. Call the library main line at (916) 264-2700 or go to their website at www.saclibrary.org for more information​.

Once your Hazardous Materials Plan (HMP) is submitted, it goes into a queue until it is reviewed by a member of our team. If it is found to be complete, you will receive an email with a notification that the HMP has been found to be complete and has been accepted. 

You will be sent a letter notifying you when your next annual certification is due, generally one year from when your previous HMP was due. If you have changes to your business that you need to report on your HMP, such as change in chemical inventory, facility layout, personnel changes, etc., you can report changes to your plan at any time by logging into CERS, making the necessary updates, and re-submitting the HMP. Please not that this does not change your annual submittal due date.

Once your Hazardous Materials Plan (HMP) is submitted, it goes into a queue until it is reviewed by a member of our team. If is found to be incomplete and there are corrections that need to be made, you will receive an email notification. You can also log into CERS at any time to check the status of your HMP submission.

You may call our e-reporting line at (916) 875-2377 or send your question via email to EMD-E-Reporting@SacCounty.gov​​.


 

Connect with Sacramento County

Gain Access to SacCounty News!

Translation Disclaimer