California Environmental Reporting System

CERS EDT Services (Testing)

Regulator Facility Submittal Submit (RFS)

Allows CUPAs with a Tier 5/6 data exchange agreement approved by Cal/EPA to submit to CERS XML data to upload/import a single facility submittal (consisting of one or more new submittal elements) for a facility the regulator is associated with. If the facility submittal includes documents, the data is submitted as a ZIP file as described in the EDT Manual. As of June 11, the test version does not yet support UST or Tiered Permitting submittal elements.

Endpoint URL

https://cersapps.calepa.ca.gov/Testing/EDT/Regulator/FacilitySubmittal/Submit?regulatorCode={RegulatorCode}

XML Schemas

Input XML Schema (Version 1/13): RegulatorFacilitySubmittal.xsd
Output XML Schema (Version 1/07): RegulatorFacilitySubmittalResponse.xsd

Facility Submittals submitted to this endpoint must be identified as one of these Submittal Types (CDR Field #20.0121):

Pass-Through Submittal:
The Facility Submittal originated from the actions of the facility's owner/operator while using a local reporting portal. The Submittal Elements exactly represent the data/documents submitted into the local reporting portal to meet legal reporting requirements for the facility, i.e., the data exactly reflects what the facility owner/operator entered in advance of pressing the "Submit" button in the local reporting portal. The facility submittal data has not been altered by the regulator. (Code value=2)

Proxy Submittal:
The Facility Submittal originated from the regulator submitting data on behalf of the facility's owner/operator. A typical Proxy Submittal use case would be that during a facility inspection or perhaps a phone call with the facility's owner/operator, it is jointly determined that a previously submitted data field(s) needs to be updated/corrected, and for whatever reason it is not convenient/practical for the business to submit the change in CERS (or a local reporting portal). So the regulator makes a change in their local data system that ultimately generates and sends a Proxy Submittal to CERS reflecting the change. In general Cal/EPA discourages CUPAs from making Proxy Submittals because a facility owner/operator could claim they did not agree to the Proxy Submittal's changes (and/or future submittals based upon it). (Code value=3)
For Proxy Submittals, the following Submitter-related fields should reflect the values shown below so CERS will clearly indicate the nature of the submittal.

  • Provide in the SubmitterEmail (CDR #20.0013) field a meaningful email for the regulator who performed the modifications, or a generic email address for the regulator.
  • Provide in the SubmitterFirstName (CDR #20.0011) field the first name of the regulator representative who performed the modification(s), or the following value: "Staff of"
  • Provide in the SubmitterLastName (CDR #20.0012) field the last name of the regulator representative who performed the modification(s), or put the name of the Regulator’s Agency (e.g., "AnyTown Environmental Health Services")
  • Regulator must provide in the SubmitterComments (CDR #20.0093) field either: 1) details about the changes made by the regulator, or 2) provide the following minimal text: "There is regulator-entered information in this submission."

For every Proxy Submittal, CUPAs MUST send an email or paper mail communication to the facility owner/operator indicating they made the Proxy Submittal, and these communications must be retained/archived for review by Cal/EPA during CUPA evaluations.


Users of this endpoint transmit data (and any uploaded documents if applicable) that represents one Facility Submittal for a single CERS ID. A Facility Submittal always includes a Facility Information Submittal Element, and then may include any other of the remaining eight Submittal Elements supported by CERS.

The document submitted to this endpoint would normally be a ZIP file that must contain an XML data file named "data.xml" which is formatted using the RegulatorFacilitySubmittal.xsd schema. The ZIP file would also include any relevant document(s) uploaded by the submitter as part of the submittal. The document(s) name should exactly match the relevant AttachmentFileName (CDR Field #20.0020) value(s) in the "data.xml" file. All files should all be located in the root of the ZIP file--do not use subdirectories. A ZIP file submission will be rejected if its data.xml file references attachment files not present in the ZIP file, or vice versa.

If none of the submittal elements in the Facility Submittal include attachment files, the data.xml file can be directly submitted to the endpoint without being inside of a ZIP file.

If any data field or elements does not pass field validation or a CERS business rule validation, the ENTIRE Facility Submittal will be rejected.

To assist with testing of this endpoint, the Regulator Portal's Submittal Search now includes a feature for generating a properly formatted ZIP file (data.xml plus document uploads as appropriate) from past CERS2 submittals that could act as an input to this endpoint. To use the feature, the user must be in "EDT Administrator" permission group, the selected submittal must be associated with the EDT Administrator's CUPA, and the submittal must have been submitted into CERS2 (since January 2012). Use the "Submittals" top navigation link, search for a past submittal, select the detail page for the submittal, and a button will appear at the bottom of the page to download the ZIP file representative of the submittal.

Restrictions/Requirements for XML-only Facility Submittal Transactions

Facility Submittal(s) submitted to CERS endpoints directly as XML must meet the following requirements:

  • The Content-Type header field must be text/xml.
  • Includes an Authorization HTTP header with a valid CERS-Key credential (see Appendix C).
  • The XML must conform and be validated against the XML schema associated with the endpoint being called.
  • The XML-only facility submittal(s) transactions cannot exceed the maximum acceptable XML only submission size [maximum limit still to be determined by Cal/EPA].
  • The XML cannot include any submittal elements referencing document uploads.

Restrictions/Requirements for ZIP File Facility Submittal Transactions

In general Facility Submittal transactions using the ZIP file upload format must be used if a facility submittal includes a document upload, although it can also be used for facility submittals without document uploads if desired. Facility Submittal Submit endpoint transactions involving ZIP file uploads files must meet the following requirements or it will be rejected:

  • Includes an Authorization HTTP header with a valid CERS-Key credential (see Appendix C).
  • Contains a single file named data.xml containing the facility submittal(s) data (using RegulatorFacilitySubmittalImport.xsd).
  • Does not contain subdirectories, ensuring no two Document Uploads have the same file name.
  • A Document Upload can be referenced by multiple Submittal Elements within a single Facility Submittal.
  • Only contains documents explicitly referenced by the data.xml file (i.e., if additional unreferenced files are present besides data.xml, the transaction will be rejected).
  • All documents uploads are approved CERS document upload types. See the CERS Document Upload Policy.
  • The ZIP file does not exceed the maximum acceptable ZIP file size [maximum size limit still to be determined by Cal/EPA].

Other considerations for ZIP file Facility Submittal transactions:

  • Document uploads included in ZIP files will be evaluated as case-insensitive file names.
  • Document uploads should not exceed the maximum acceptable document upload size [See the CERS Document Upload Policy.

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