On December 21, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first enacted the NPDES Electronic Reporting Rule (E-Rule) to modernize Clean Water Act reporting. The rule pushed for municipalities, industries, and other facilities covered by the NPDES permitting program to switch over to electronic data reporting instead of submitting paper Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMR). The rule required that all NPDES permittees submit their DMRs through some electronic reporting system.