v>EPA
CROMERR Success Story
North Dakota Department of Health
The North Dakota Department of Health, Environmental Health Section
(EHS) received official approval from EPA under the Cross-Media Electronic
Reporting Regulation (CROMERR) for modifications/revisions to their
authorized drinking water program to allow electronic reporting for their
Electronic Reporting Information System (ERIS). ERIS accepts reports of
drinking water analytical data for public drinking water supply systems
from laboratories in the state. These reports are required under 40
CFR Part 141 (Primary National Drinking Water Regulations). The
system does not accept "priority reports" or other reports that
require electronic signatures.
As part of the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) requirements, public
water supply systems are required to do routine sampling and
monitoring of drinking water from their water systems. Prior to the
publication of CROMERR, EHS was receiving this data from many
North Dakota laboratories via e-mail EHS created ERIS in part so
they could receive this data electronically in a CROMERR-compliant
manner. A U.S. EPA Environmental Exchange Network Grant is
helping to fund ERIS' development. ERIS is the first approved
application for a system that only accepts reports that do not
require electronic signature. Such systems are not subject to the
CROMERR requirements in section 3.2000(b)(5), specific to
electronic signatures. Accordingly, the ERIS system design and
associated CROMERR application checklist do not address these
electronic-signature-specific requirements.
The North Dakota Solution to
Meeting CROMERR Requirements
ERIS' platform is an SQL Server Database accessed through web
pages. To protect against transmission errors and maintain secure
internet transmissions, ERIS uses an SSL (Version 3). Users access
the system after submitting a correct username and password that
are supplied by the ERIS administrator. In the ERIS system users
can be associated with multiple facilities, but will have access only
to those facilities with which they are associated. The system
calculates a 32-byte checksum of submitted files using SHA-256
algorithm prior to uploading the report, and stores this checksum in the
For More Information
on CROMERR Contact:
cromerr@epa.gov
http://www.epa.gov/cromerr/
APRIL 2009
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OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION
OFFICE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION

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database with the copy of record (COR). The system recalculates the checksum when the COR is
saved to the server and verifies that the original and recalculated checksums match. Matching
checksums provide evidence that no transmission errors occurred and that the document has not
been altered since the time the original checksum was calculated.
The database where each uploaded file is stored has an audit log that tracks all users who access
the database. This log is only accessible to database administrators and cannot be accessed by any
ERIS users or other ERIS administrators. The databases where the records are stored are all on
the North Dakota Information Technology Department (ITD) servers. These servers are in a
server cluster that used Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) to ensure data is not lost
in the case of a server failure.
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OFFICE OF ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION
OFFICE OF INFORMATION COLLECTION

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