Texas notices of violation and enforcement actions

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) records the violations its investigators find and the enforcement actions that follow. The records run from a notice of violation, which most often ends with the problem corrected, to an order with a penalty issued by the TCEQ commissioners or a court.

In a Phase I ESA

ASTM E1527-21 does not name enforcement lists among its standard record sources. A violation record at a property is still worth reading, and the first job is to tell which step of the process it shows.

Record	What TCEQ says it is
Notice of Violation (NOV)	Documents the violations found during an inspection, sets a time to respond, and requires documentation of compliance. TCEQ says most violations are quickly corrected in response to notices of violation.
Notice of Enforcement (NOE)	Issued when serious or continuing violations are found. It puts the recipient on notice that the case has been referred for enforcement. The recipient can ask for an enforcement review meeting if it believes the violations were cited in error and has new information the investigator did not evaluate.
Agreed order	Describes the alleged violations and the actions needed to correct them, and normally includes a calculated penalty.
Administrative order or court order	The two ways TCEQ pursues penalties: an order issued by the TCEQ commissioners, or referral to the Office of the Attorney General for enforcement through the courts.

Three points follow.

• A notice of violation is not a finding of contamination. It records what an investigator found on an inspection or a records review. Read what was cited.
• Pending means not final. TCEQ calls an action pending once it is accepted for enforcement but before the action is effective. TCEQ says an agreed order describes the alleged violations.
• Detail on pending cases is limited. TCEQ says further details on pending enforcement cases are available only through an open records request, because the cases involve possible litigation.

Where to look a site up

• Track Pending Enforcement Actions explains the pending-actions search, which takes a case number, a regulated entity or respondent name or number, a county, a region or a program. The same page links lists of administrative orders and court orders issued since September 1, 1998.
• Enforcement Process and Actions links TCEQ's compliance history pages, where it publishes how it rates the compliance histories of regulated entities.
• Look Up Data and Records Online links the complaint status search and the investigation reports search.
• The Enforcement Division is at 512-239-2545 or oce@tceq.texas.gov.

Getting the file

TCEQ offers three routes to its records: TCEQ Records Online for records already scanned, an email to the Central File Room (cfrreq@tceq.texas.gov) to view or copy paper and microform records, and a Public Information Request for records that are not available through the file room or that contain confidential information.

Sources

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality pages, read September 30, 2026:

• The Enforcement Process: From Violations to Actions, last modified August 4, 2026.
• Enforcement Process and Actions, last modified March 5, 2026.
• Track Pending Enforcement Actions, last modified August 12, 2026.
• Enforcement Actions and Reports, last modified July 2, 2026.
• Look Up Data and Records Online, last modified September 9, 2026.
• Access Records from our Central File Room, last modified July 17, 2026.