Brownfields Assessment, Cleanup and Redevelopment Exchange System (ACRES) Release Notes

This page provides release notes for the ACRES tool.

January 13, 2016 ACRES v. 5.02.070
December 9, 2016 ACRES v. 5.02.060
October 7, 2016 ACRES v. 5.02.040
July 19, 2016 ACRES v. 5.02.020
June 20, 2016 ACRES v. 5.02.010
May 31, 2016 ACRES v. 5.02.000
April 26, 2016 ACRES v. 5.01.140
February 2, 2016 ACRES v. 5.01.110
December 15, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.100
November 10, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.090
October 13, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.080
September 11, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.070
August 4, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.060
June 23, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.050
May 26, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.040
April 28, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.030
March 31, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.020
March 4, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.010
February 9, 2015 ACRES v. 5.01.000
January 14, 2015 ACRES v. 5.00.240
December 9, 2014 ACRES v. 5.00.230
November 12, 2014 ACRES v. 5.00.220
October 14, 2014 ACRES v. 5.00.210
August 19, 2014 ACRES v. 5.00.190
April 29, 2014 ACRES v. 5.00.150
March 4, 2014 – ACRES v. 5.00.130
February 4, 2014 ACRES v. 5.00.120
January 14, 2014 ACRES v. 5.00.110
December 17, 2013 ACRES v. 5.00.100
November 12, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.090
September 17, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.080
August 20, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.070
July 23, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.060
June 25, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.050
May 29, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.040
April 5, 2013 ACRES v. 5.00.020
April 5, 2013 ACRES v. 5.00.010
February 5, 2013 ACRES v. 4.01.120
January 8, 2013 ACRES v. 4.01.110
December 7, 2012 ACRES v. 4.01.100
November 9, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.090
October 5, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.080
September 7, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.070
August 6, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.060
June 13, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.050
May 11, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.040
April 13, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.030
March 9, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.020
February 10, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.010
January 20, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.00.110
December 8, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.100
November 3, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.090
October 7, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.080
September 7, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.070
August 4, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.060
July 1, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.050
May 18, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.042
June 17, 2010 - ACRES v. 4.00.040
April 9, 2010 - ACRES v. 4.00.030
January 31, 2010 - ACRES v. 4.00.020

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.070) was released Friday, January 13th.

Cooperative Agreement Recipients

Area-Wide Planning (AWP) Data Entry

The new AWP reporting home page was released in the last sprint (December 2016). If you are updating AWP information for the first time and need a hint on how to start, here are the ‘quick clicks’ you’ll need: click the ‘My Cooperative Agreement’ tab on your home page and then click the link to the AWP CA. The new AWP page has 7 tabs. Use the tabs to move from page to page as you enter AWP information, being sure to click the ‘Save’ button on each page. To have your project officer review the information, click the ‘Review & Submit’ tab, scroll to the bottom of the review page and click the ‘Submit’ button.>

If you have any questions feel free to reach out to the ACRES Help Desk. Feedback is welcome and can be sent using the ‘Feedback’ or ‘Contact Us’ links at the top of every ACRES page.
Property Profile Page (PPF) – county names added automatically

When a new property is created, or a property address updated, the county in which the property exists will be automatically updated on the PPF. This will save users data entry time.

Project Officers

Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) – option to display accomplishments in Draft status

The option to display draft accomplishments (work packages awaiting approval) has been added to the PAR. To view draft accomplishment statistics and details, select the report criteria (accomplishment type(s), year(s), region(s)) and click the box for ‘Draft Data (awaiting approval)’ in the Optional Selections column. Then click the ‘Run Report’ button. When selecting draft, note that ONLY draft (no final) accomplishments are displayed.
Jurisdiction Data Association

The ability to identify jurisdiction information for a cooperative agreement has been added back into the project officer’s ‘Manage This Cooperative Agreement’ function. To access this feature, navigate to the ‘My Regional Cooperative Agreements’ tab and click the link for a specific CA. At the top of the CA Home page, click the ‘Manage This Cooperative Agreement’ button and scroll to the Jurisdiction Information section. Select a state/territory and a Jurisdiction Type; then click the ‘Search Jurisdictions’ button. A list of available jurisdictions is displayed. Click the ‘Associate Jurisdiction’ button next to the appropriate line and it will appear in the jurisdiction table. This information will be passed to CIMC during the monthly ACRES-CIMC update process (18th of each month).

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at acres_help@usepa.onmicrosoft.com or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.060) was released Friday, December 9th.

All Users

ACRES Bulletin – November 2016

The November 2016 bulletin was distributed to users. If you missed reading it, you can access this bulletin and all previous bulletins using the following link: http://acres.ceeopcloud.net/acres_bulletin/ebulletins/index.html
Property Home Page – Accomplishment Pending

Under a cleanup grant, when a property has all the information needed to qualify as an accomplishment, ACRES will display the status “Cleanup pending approval” on the Property Home page (Cleanup section). Previously this message also included the fiscal year in which the property met accomplishment requirements. However, the accomplishment is counted in the year the cleanup is approved, not the year requirements are met. Because verification and approval can take some time, this created some confusion when the 'pending approval' year did not match the approval year.

Cooperative Agreement Recipients

Area-Wide Planning (AWP) Home Page Redesigned

The AWP reporting home page has been completely redesigned! You are now able to provide specific information about your project area, including area-wide boundaries, catalyst/high priority brownfield site(s) details, project leveraging, type(s) of reuse planned and project web links. You can also report your implementation activities, share brownfields redevelopment updates and associate existing ACRES property records from brownfield sites within the same project area.

These improvements to the home page were made to help you share more details around your specific project area, record important information about key brownfield sites and track a variety of accomplishments in a more consistent way across different AWP project stages. The AWP Home page now includes six tabs to track AWP-specific data:
1. Project Area Information - includes project boundaries, catalyst/high priority brownfields and associated brownfield sites
2. Leveraged Resources - helps you develop or implement your area-wide plan
3. Plan Summary - highlights AWP goals and project web links
4. Lessons Learned - helps others benefit from your experiences
5. Implementation Activities – record these during or after the AWP grant
6. Redeveloped Sites - aligns with your community’s overall AWP goals

Project Officers

Property Accomplishment Report (PAR) Enhancement

On the PAR report, for JT reporting, years FY05 and earlier are reported in greater detail. Previously a report for the year FY06 included a summary of all data from 1998 through 2006. Each of the older grants now displays as an individual report line. To view pre-FY06 data on the PAR, select “Job Training Cooperative Agreements by Grant FY” as an Alternate Cooperative Agreement Type and select “All Years” as the Select Year(s) to report.
PO Home Page

The accomplishment table at the top of a PO's home page has been modified to exclude ARRA accomplishments. ARRA accomplishments do not count towards annual targets and are therefore not included in either PAT or PAR counts. Removing them from the PO Home page provides consistency in annual accomplishment reporting. If a PO wishes to view ARRA statistics, these are available as an alternate option on the PAR to list only ARRA.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.040) was released Friday, October 7th.

All Users

Changes to the Property Profile Form (PPF)

Every 3 years, EPA reevaluates the PPF to determine whether new data fields are needed and whether existing data fields are no longer useful. In 2016, the following changes were approved and are effective with this release:

1. A new field, ‘Property Alias’, has been added to the Property Background Information section, located below the ‘Property Name’. Multiple aliases can be entered. Additionally, the Find Property function has been modified to allow users to search using ‘Property Alias’ name. To search by alias name, enter the name into either Keyword or the Property Name and click the ‘Filter Now’ button.

2. In the Property Geographic Information section, 4 fields related to the manual calculation of latitude and longitude (lat/long) have been removed. Lat/long values are automatically added to ACRES based on the property address. The removed fields are:
- Horizontal Collection Method
- Source Map Scale Number
- Reference Point
- Horizontal Reference Datum

The PPF will be reevaluated again in 2019. Suggestions for PPF improvements are always welcome and will be included in the discussion for the next update. Please send these to the ACRES Help Desk.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at ACRES_help@csra.com or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.020) was released Tuesday, July 19th.

All Users

Quarterly Progress Report now available for Assessment Grants

Similar to the Quarterly Progress Reporting for cleanup grants, a version is now available to all users for entering/editing/approving their quarterly reporting requirements for assessment grants. Some of the required report data, including assessment start/end dates and funding, is pulled from ACRES which makes the report much easier to complete online compared to using a report template/paper version. Also, some of the report information is automatically forwarded to future reports which further reduces the amount of time it takes to complete a quarterly progress report.

CAR users can access the report by clicking the “My Cooperative Agreements” tab in the middle of their Home page. A listing of all associated CAs is displayed and a new column appears on the right. For every assessment or cleanup grant that does not have a quarterly report for the previous quarter, a green button titled “Generate Quarterly Report” will display. Click the green button to start a new report. Enter information in all applicable fields (note that report information is organized by tabs) and then submit to your project officer for review/approval using the last tab, Review & Submit. Have questions on what you should enter into a particular field? Click the help icon at the top of each section for details.

Project Officers can access reports that have been submitted for their approval by clicking the ‘Quarterly Reports to Review’ tab located in the middle of their Home page. All submitted reports will be listed under the tab.

Once a quarterly progress report has been submitted and approved, it is available for view only. Reports from previous quarters are accessible on both the “My Cooperative Agreements” tab and on the Cooperative Agreement Home page. Click the ‘View Previous Quarterly Reports’ link and then select a specific report.

Reports can be printed at any stage (during CAR initial entry, during project officer (PO) approval process, and after the report is approved/final) using the ‘Print’ button at the bottom of the report.
ACRES Help Desk – Final Email Address Change

The technical issue with the ACRES Help Desk email has a final resolution. It includes a change in the email address. Please send help requests to acres_help@usepa.onmicrosoft.com. The links to the Help Desk in ACRES have all been updated so if you click on the link in ACRES, you will be directed to the correct address. However< if you have the URL saved on your computer, be sure to change it to the new address.

Project Officers

Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) Enhancement

A new grant type selection option has been added to the report filters. It is for Multi-Purpose cooperative agreements. Note that only 9 of these grants were awarded (all in FY12).

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at ACRES_help@csra.com or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.010) was released Monday, June 20th.

All Users

Assessment, Cleanup and Revolving Loan Fund (ARC) Grant Awards

The 2016 ARC Grant Fact Sheets were posted to the EPA web site on Tuesday, May 31st. The EPA announced the selection of 131 communities who will receive 218 grants, for approximately $55.2 million in ARC grants. These funds will aid under-served and economically disadvantaged communities through the assessment and cleanup of abandoned industrial and commercial properties and expand the ability of communities to recycle vacant and abandoned properties for new, productive reuses. To view the grant fact sheets, please go to: https://cfpub.epa.gov/bf_factsheets/
Cooperative Agreement (CA) Home Page – Primary Data Contact

The separate ‘Primary Contact’ field displayed on the CA Home page has been combined with the 'Primary Reviewer' field and now displays as the 'Primary Reviewer/Contact'.
ACRES Help Desk – New Email Address

Due to technical issues at the EPA, the email address for the ACRES Help Desk has been changed. Please send help requests to ACRES_help@csra.com (the old URL was ACRES_Help@epa.gov). The links to the Help Desk in ACRES have all been updated so if you click on the link in ACRES, you will be directed to the correct address. However if you have the URL saved on your computer, be sure to change it to the new address.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at ACRES_help@csra.com or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.000) was released Tuesday, May 31st.

All Users

Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training (EWDJT) Awards

The 2016 EWDJT Grant Fact Sheets were posted to the EPA web site on Thursday, May 12th. The EPA announced the selection of 18 grantees for approximately $3.5 million in EWDJT grants. Each grantee will receive funds to operate environmental job training programs that advance environmental justice by providing opportunities for residents living in areas impacted by contaminated lands. Trainees gain experience for jobs related to cleanup activities in their own communities. To view the grant fact sheets, please go to: https://cfpub.epa.gov/bf_factsheets/
Property Profile Form (PPF) – Help Text Update

On Part 2 of the PPF, the help text has been clarified in the Contaminants & Media Affected Information section for the following fields:
- REC (Recognized Environmental Conditions)
  Indicate the presence or likely presence of any hazardous substances or petroleum products in, on, or at a property. Please make sure to enter this information at the end of Phase I.
- Found (Contaminant/Media Found)
  Indicate what types of contaminants have been identified or detected through the assessment activities, marking the boxes for each and every type of contaminant that has been detected. Levels may or may not exceed relevant standards set by the state/jurisdiction. Please make sure to enter the Found information at the end of Phase II.

EPA Users

Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) – TBA Accomplishments

The display of accomplishments that are associated with TBA grants has been modified on the PAR. Because TBAs can be associated with properties from multiple states, the state listed on the report is now the state associated to the property. It appears in a new ‘Property State’ column adjacent the ‘Property Name’ column.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.140) was released Tuesday, April 26th.

CAR Users

Area Wide Planning (AWP) Property Association
Only existing properties can be associated to an AWP grant. If a user wishes to associate a property to AWP, it should have previously been added to ACRES and associated to either an assessment, cleanup, RLF or state/tribal grant. The ‘add property’ button which was erroneously displaying on the AWP grant home page has been removed.

EPA Users

New Program Accomplishment Report (PAR)
We listened and after collecting suggestions and ‘like-to-haves’, the PAR has been redesigned to better meet your reporting needs. Driven by accomplishment type (assessment, cleanup, dollars leveraged, jobs leveraged or acres/properties ready for reuse), you can filter by grant type, as applicable for the accomplishment type selected, if desired. In addition, you can select a specific fiscal year, a number of years, or all years. You can further filter by region(s) or state(s). For example, you can search for FY16 cleanup accomplishments in a single state within your region or for the entire region. Or you may opt to review all of last year’s accomplishments by selecting FY15, all accomplishment types and all regions.

We’ve also added the capability to report accomplishments for alternate CA types including Job Training, Area Wide Planning and ARRA grants.

The new PAR can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet so you can save, print, share, and further edit the information.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.110) was released Tuesday, February 2nd.

All ACRES Users

ACRES Bulletin
A new ACRES Bulletin was emailed to users on January 22nd. It featured a success story from Leavenworth, Kansas (Region 7) and highlights from the 2015 Brownfields Conference. If you’d like to view other versions of the bulletin, simply click the ‘View Previous Bulletins’ link at the top of the bulletin. There are some informative and pertinent articles for using ACRES, particularly in Frank’s Tips.
2016 Grants Added to ACRES Database
New grants were added to ACRES including State and Tribal – 128(a), Area-Wide Planning (AWP) and Job Training grants. For the current fiscal year to date, there are 285 grants/cooperative agreements in ACRES.

EPA Users

Regional Performance Report for AWP Grants
When the AWP tab was added, there were very few AWP grants and the tab displayed all of them when clicked. This is the third year the grants have been awarded and there are now almost 50, making it more cumbersome to use the tab. The tab has been updated to display only the AWP grants in your region.
Cooperative Agreement Home Page – Add New Properties
When associating a new property from the CA Home page (including TBAs), POs will notice that the Find Property page is filtered to display properties only from within the state/region. This significantly reduces the load time for the property results page. The filter options on the left side of the screen can be used to further filter the properties (i.e. by City) or to expand to include adjoining states. This improvement was requested by one of our EPA users.
State and Tribal Program Activity Levels (PALs) Report
Several minor improvements were added this month:
- When users access the PALs organization page, they now have the option to view the statistical data entered for an organization. Any organization that has data entered will have a ‘View’ link to the right of the name. Click the link to view activities in which the organization participated.
- A Tribal-only version of the report is now available for viewing. Click the ‘Display Tribal Only PAL Report’ link to produce the report.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.100) was released Tuesday, December 15th.

All ACRES Users

WAM Password Reset link
At the 2015 Brownfields Conference, an ACRES trainee suggested adding a link to the ACRES Login page to take users directly to the WAM password reset page. This link, titled ‘ Reset your EPA WAM password’, has been added as requested. The link benefits users who might miss or delete the WAM reset password emails (in some cases the emails end up in a user’s spam folder).

EPA Users

State and Tribal Program Activity Levels (PALs) Report
An annual statistical report that summarizes state/tribal information has been added to the Reports tab. It is available for Project Officers and other EPA officers for viewing only. The report consists of 3 tables. The first 2 contain statistics gathered from the state/tribal grantees, which are entered the January following the end of a fiscal year. The third table contains state/tribal accomplishment numbers which are real time (extracted from ACRES).
Regional Status tab
On the Regional Status page, the column for ‘Status Since’ which contained both ‘status’ and ‘status date last updated’ has been split into 2 separate columns. Project officers can now sort on each of these fields individually providing better reporting options.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.090) was released Tuesday, November 10th.

All ACRES Users

2015 Supplemental Funding in ACRES
Approximately 22 ACRES grants were updated with supplemental funding information.
EPA Completes Website Redesign
EPA’s new web design affected many of the links that ACRES users access. ACRES was updated for the new EPA links and then tested at length to verify that all links work correctly.
Internet Explorer (IE) 11 Issues
In its latest upgrade to IE 11, Microsoft introduced changes that have affected the display of several ACRES screens on some government computers. Team ACRES has worked quickly to identify and remedy the issues. The IE 11 issues do not appear for any other browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and earlier versions of IE.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.080) was released Tuesday, October 13th.

All ACRES Users

2015 Assessment and Cleanup Grants in ACRES
The 2015 Assessment and Cleanup grants have been loaded into the ACRES database. There are now 30 cleanup and 81 assessment grants. Users who are associated with the grants can enter property information directly into ACRES.

Work is underway to add the 2015 supplemental information to the ACRES database this month.

EPA Users

Regional Status Tab
The report for this tab has been problematic for several larger regions due to the substantial number of work packages to display. To resolve the problems the report now displays the data on pages as opposed to one long running report. Similar to the Regional Performance Report, the default displays 10 work packages per page. At the bottom of the report, the user has an option to display up to 50 work packages per page (options are available in increments of 10). Note that the sort feature at the top of the page will sort for all work packages, not just those displayed on the page.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.070) was released Friday, September 11th.

All ACRES Users

2015 Job Training and Area-Wide Planning Grants in ACRES
The 2015 Job Training and Area-Wide Planning grants have been loaded into the ACRES database. Users who are associated with the grants can now enter property and job training information directly into ACRES.

Work is underway to add the 2015 Assessment and Cleanup grants to the ACRES database this month.
Showcase Community Grants
Nineteen older grants (award years 1998 – 2004) have been designated as Showcase Community Grants. Previously these were designated as either an Assessment or a Cleanup grant. These grants provided funding for the Brownfields Showcase Communities program, whereby EPA staff were assigned to work at the city level on the city's Brownfields program under an Intergovernmental Personnel Agreement (IPA). The Showcase Community Grants can be easily viewed using the ACRES Find Property/Cooperative Agreement tab, filtering on a Cooperative Agreement Type of “Showcase Community.”

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.060) was released Tuesday, August 4th.

All ACRES Users

Property Home Page – Property Progress Status Bar
In the Property Progress section, a new status of “Not Required” is displayed when property cleanup is actually not required. If cleanup is required and has not begun, the status will continue to display “Not Started”. Likewise, when the Institutional Controls are designated as “not required” on the Property Profile Page (PPF), the Property Progress status will display “Not Required”. This status bar update, requested by one of our Project Officers, will allow the actions to indicate that they aren’t needed instead of haven’t been started yet.
ACRES Bulletin
The latest bulletin was emailed to users on Friday, July 31st. It features the Green Bay, Wisconsin riverfront redesign success story, information on the 2015 grant announcements, and tips on keeping your ACRES account current.
Find Property/Cooperative Agreement/TBA Tab
The ‘Export to Excel’ option for this tab produces a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet format has been modified so that the spreadsheet can be sorted by any of the data columns.

CAR Users

Home Page - Instructions for Completing a Property Profile Form (PPF)
A link has been added to the Quick Links section on the Home page. Click the Instructions for Completing a Property Profile Form (PPF) link and detailed instructions are displayed for completing a Brownfields Property Profile Form.

EPA Users

Quarterly Report
Project Officer comments are now retained after the Quarterly Report is returned for clarification to a grantee. The EPA Project Officer can view them after the updated report is returned for approval.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.050) was released Tuesday, June 23rd.

All ACRES Users

2015 Grant Fact Sheets added for Job Training, Cleanup and Assessment Grantees
The 19 Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training (EWDJT) Grantees announced for 2015 have been added to the Grant Fact Sheets. They can be viewed at http://cfpub.epa.gov/bf_factsheets/. The approximate $3.6 million in grants will be used in communities across the country to recruit and train unemployed and underemployed individuals with the skills needed to secure employment in the environmental field.

The 147 Brownfields Assessment and Cleanup Grant Fact Sheets for 2015 are also available for viewing at http://cfpub.epa.gov/bf_factsheets/. The communities being awarded the grants will receive $54.3 million in EPA Brownfields funding. These funds will aid communities and businesses in returning economic stability to under-served and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods through the assessment and cleanup of abandoned industrial and commercial properties.
Area-Wide Planning Grants
A new text field has been added to the Area-Wide Planning (AWP) grant home page. For each leveraged funding line, a new Date field is available to allow users to provide timeframe (or dates) for the project area leveraging. This allows for a clearer picture of the leveraging that took place before the AWP grant project was awarded vs. the leveraging that happened later. A help icon is available for the field with sample data entry suggestions.

CAR Users

New Property Add – Duplication Check
To reduce the creation of duplicate properties, a new check has been added to the Property Add function. When users enter the address information and size for a new property, ACRES performs a validation using the street and zip code to see if a matching property already exists. If one is found, a popup is displayed which:
1. Notifies the CAR that a similar property already exists,
2. Lists information on the property (ID, name, address) for use in determining whether the properties are duplicates or unique, and
3. Gives the CAR the options to either add the property anyhow or return to the Find page to associate the existing property to their grant.
Property Profile Form (PPF), Page 2, Assessment Funding
When Assessment Phase I or II funding information is added to the PPF (Page 2) and the CAR is adding EPA/federal funding, the activity field will be pre-populated with the source of funding selected (Phase I or Phase II).

EPA Users

Home Page - View Work Packages out of Workflow
Once a Project Officer (PO) finishes their processing of a work package and assigns it forward, they can no longer see the work package or what is happening with it. A new option has been added to the bottom of the PO Home page to allow POs to view work packages that they have worked on which are not yet complete. With a click on the “Show" link at the bottom of the Home page, they can view work packages that have either been submitted to HQ for approval or returned to CARs for clarification. This is a useful tool for following up on work packages that the PO wishes to have completed. Note that the list must be opened using the link (it defaults to being hidden) – and once opened, can be closed by clicking the Hide link.

This improvement was requested by one of our ACRES Project Officers.

Admin Users

Cooperative Agreement Administration – Initial Project Start Date
The Cooperative Agreement Administration function has been updated to allow for the entry/update of Initial Project Period Start and End Dates. In the past, this information was not always available when new grants were loaded into ACRES. If there is no project start date, assessment and cleanup accomplishments are not counted. This new feature allows the Admin to quickly update these important fields.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.040) was released Tuesday, May 26th.

All ACRES Users

Cleanup Funding Table – moved to top of section
The table for Cleanup funding on the Property Profile Form (PPF), Part 2 and on the associated work package review pages, now displays at the top of the section under the Cleanup Activity initial/completion date fields. This move makes the funding table location consistent with the Assessment and Redevelopment funding table locations. Previously the table was at the bottom of the section.
Cooperative Agreement (CA) Home Page – Comment field
The Cooperative Agreement Comment field, located at the top of the CA Home page, has been removed from the page. This is an old field that users do not access. Removing the link simplifies the top of the CA Home page.

CAR Users

Quarterly Report improvements
- Delete capability has been added to the Quarterly Reports function. If you wish to delete a report that has NOT been submitted to the Project Officer (PO), click the green ‘Delete Quarterly Report’ button (located at the top of each report page in the Profile Information section). Once reports have been submitted to the PO, they cannot be deleted.
- Funding information from previous reports was not displaying in the Funds Expended table correctly. This issue has been resolved and previous funding, including ‘Costs Incurred to Date’ and ‘Total Remaining’, now display.
- At a request from users, several text box titles have been changed to more meaningful names (example: “Cost Share and Leveraged Options” has been updated to “Cost Share and Leveraging Information”).

EPA Users

Regional Status Tab
Sort capability has been re-added for the report columns “Status Since” and “Owner”.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.030) was released Tuesday, April 28th.

All ACRES Users

Cooperative Agreement Home Page – new property map
A new property map is displayed on the ACRES Cooperative Agreement (CA) Home page that highlights properties associated to the user’s CA. The map allows users to quickly look at all of the properties, identify any errors, and prevent the creation of duplicate properties. The map is located at the top of the ‘Properties Addressed by this Cooperative Agreement’ section. An icon appears for each associated property. Click any icon and the property name and address are displayed with a link to open the property’s home page. Great visual for users – suggested by one of our CAR users!
Find PROPERTY/COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT/TBA tab
The filter option for the ‘Cooperative Agreement State’ field listed the states in order by state abbreviation, however displayed the state name. States, for example, that began with the letter “M” or “N” appeared to be a bit out of order. The listing is now in alpha order by state name.

CAR Users

Quarterly Report – new tab displays reports in progress
A new tab is available on the CAR Home page to provide easy access to quarterly reports in progress. Click the ‘Open Quarterly Reports’ tab (located next to the Open Work Packages tab) to display a list of all quarterly reports that are either in progress or have been returned for clarification. Note the number next to the tab title that indicates the number of reports in the list. The listing provides a direct link to the reports and information for each that includes: CA Recipient Name, CA number, the reporting quarter, the date submitted, the project officer assigned and the report action (edits in progress, returned for clarification).

EPA Users

Regional Performance Report
Two new columns have been added to this report to display the Initial Project Start Date and the Initial Project End Date. These appear next to the Current POP Date column (which displays a date if the grant was extended or the end date otherwise updated).

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.020) was released Tuesday, March 31st.

All ACRES Users

Property Deletion/Disassociation from a Cooperative Agreement
In the past, it has been difficult to delete an erroneous property record. It required a call to the ACRES Help Desk and time. A new feature has been added on the Property Profile Form (PPF) which allows CARs to mark a property for deletion or to mark it for disassociation from the Cooperative Agreement. The new feature is located at the top right hand side of the PPF Property Profile section. CARs should click the delete/disassociate box and then choose a reason (mandatory). Users are asked to select from: Duplicate Property, Cancelled (no work completed), Not a Brownfields Property, Associated to Wrong CA, or Other (enter text in box). Like all other ACRES work packages, you must submit this to your Project Officer for approval. Project Officers will notice that a new work package displays on their Home page when a property assigned to one of their CAs has been marked for deletion or disassociation. The work package will have a status of “Property Marked for Deletion or Disassociation” and the status is displayed in red font. The PO should click the “Review Data” link for the property and make sure that the deletion will not negatively affect existing accomplishment counts. If this is a possibility, a warning message is displayed in the message section located just underneath the Profile Information section. If all is well, approve the work package. If there is an issue, a note can be added in the Reviewer Feedback text box and the work package returned to the CAR for clarification.

This new feature will allow for a faster deletion/disassociation process. It also provides several levels of review to prevent an accomplishment count from being deleted (especially important at the end of the fiscal year when final counts are extremely important and difficult to correct).
ACRES Bulletin
A new 2014 ACRES Bulletin was emailed to users on March 2nd. If you’d like to view other versions of the bulletin, simply click the View Previous Bulletins link at the top of the bulletin. There are some informative and pertinent articles for using ACRES (see Frank’s Tips sections).
Area-Wide Planning (AWP) Grants
Grant Fact Sheets for the twenty 2015 AWP grant awards are now available for viewing. The grants can be viewed from the Brownfields Grant Fact Sheet Search page (http://cfpub.epa.gov/bf_factsheets/).

CAR Users

New Property Add – Address Entry Made Easier
When entering information for a new property record, ACRES now auto-populates your city and state when you enter the zip code. Note that the zip code field has been moved to precede the city and state fields. This is another time saver for data entry.
Notification that PO has Work Package > 30 Days
In your email notification (the one you’ve opted to receive weekly, monthly, or as it happens), you will now receive notification if your PO has had one of your work packages in their queue for 30 days or more. The PO will also receive notification. This has been added to help prevent a back log of work packages that need attention.
Quarterly Performance Report
Information entered into the Project Progress task table will be copied to subsequent Quarterly Reports to save data entry time. Because this is status information that may reflect completed tasks, this information will be available for updating at the start of the new quarter’s report. Table information should be reviewed and then updated as needed.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.010) was released Wednesday, March 4th.

All ACRES Users

Quarterly Performance Report

To ensure that data entry is not lost, when a user enters text into any of the text boxes and moves to a new tab on the report, the text is automatically saved without having to click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the page.
Statistical information on the quarterly performance reports is being extracted to track the success of the new report. Available for EPA management, stats tracked include the number of quarterly reports submitted, the number of reports submitted on time, and the number of reports approved. The statistics are tracked by region.

Closed Grants

The ACRES database was updated with closeout information from the Integrated Grants Management System (IGMS). Although many project officers do close out their grants in ACRES, there were many grants that should’ve been marked as closed that were displaying as open. This update will eliminate confusion caused by the opened/closed discrepancy.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.000) was released Monday, February 9th.

All ACRES Users

Leveraged Funding Information
A date/time stamp is now captured when leveraged funding is modified (added, updated or deleted) on the Property Profile Page.
Area Wide Planning (AWP) Grants
A table that isn’t applicable to AWP grants has been removed from the AWP Cooperative Agreement Home page. The table, used to display Anticipated Performance Measures, is for Assessment, Cleanup, RLF and State/Tribal grants only. This simplifies the AWP Home page and removes unneeded information.
Region 5 “BG” Grants
Using data extracted from IGMS, approximately a dozen ‘BG’ grants were added to ACRES for Region 5.

EPA Users

Regional Performance Report
This report has been updated to include a column for the Period of Performance (PoP) Date (8th column from the left). This column replaces the Project Period End Date column. The PoP Date is a more meaningful date for tracking a property through the work flow.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.240) was released Wednesday, January 14th.

All ACRES Users

Quarterly Progress Reports
- Quarterly Progress Reporting is available to all users for entering/editing/approving their quarterly reporting requirements for cleanup grants.
  
  CAR users can access the report from their Cooperative Agreement (CA) Home page. If you are associated to a cleanup grant, a green button will display in the CA Profile Information section. Click the green button, 'Generate Quarterly Report', and the progress report displays. Enter information in all applicable fields (note that report information is organized by tabs) and then submit to your project officer for review/approval using the last tab, Review & Submit.
  
  Project Officers can access reports that have been submitted for their approval by clicking the ‘Quarterly Reports to Review’ tab located in the middle of their Home page. All submitted reports will be listed under the tab.
  
  Once a quarterly progress report has been submitted and approved, it is available for view only. Reports from previous quarters are accessible on the CA Home page. Click the ‘View Previous Quarterly Reports’ link and click to select a specific report.
  
  Reports can be printed at any stage (during CAR initial entry, during project officer (PO) approval process, and after the report is approved/final) using the ‘Print’ button at the bottom of the report.
- An optional data table that records Task Based Funding is available under the Finance tab on the Quarterly Progress Report. Some regions track financial information to this detail and others do not. The table is collapsed and does not display unless data is added. To access the table and enter data, click the box next to ‘Click here to add optional task-based funding’ which can be found under the Funds Expended table.
View Cooperative Agreement Profile Information link removed
The 'View Cooperative Agreement Profile Information' link, located on the top of the CA Home page, has been removed. It displayed data fields that were rarely, if ever used. The ability to update the old fields was removed over a year ago when the Project Officer Module was redesigned.

CAR Users

Area Wide Planning Grants
CARs can now enter leveraged funding for Area Wide Planning (AWP) grants. Previously leveraged funding data entry was restricted to Project Officers. To add or update this funding, navigate to the AWP Cooperative Agreement Home page and then scroll to the Area Wide Planning - Leveraged Funding section. Existing funding information is displayed and can be modified by typing new data inside the data field box. To create additional funding, click the ‘Add Leveraged Funding’ link, enter the data and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

EPA Users

Quarterly Progress Report
Project officers can now edit quarterly progress report information that is sent to them for review, similar to the edit capability provided for property work packages that need reviewing. This supplements the ‘Return for Clarification’ function which notifies the CAR that updating is needed. The edit capability is intended for cases where small, quick changes can help to finalize the report. To access the report, click the ‘Quarterly Reports to Review’ tab on your Home page. Click the ‘Review Report’ link to access a specific report. The report data is listed on a single scrollable page. To edit any of the data fields, click the ‘Edit’ link located at the top right hand corner of any section title bar. This action provides access to all of the report information. Use the tabs at the top of the page to move from section to section. After all changes are completed, click the ‘Save and Go to QA’ button. Then finalize your review and click the ‘Accept’ button.
Return for Clarification
The capability to return a work package to a CAR for clarification has been expanded. Work packages that were submitted to national program review and sent back for clarification previously could not be then returned to the CAR. The PO will see the ‘Return to Submitter for Clarification’ button available for these work packages so they can be sent back to the CAR.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.230) was released Tuesday, December 9th.

All ACRES Users

2014 Grants in ACRES
The 2014 Brownfields grants have been added to the ACRES database. Users can now add grant and property information to their new grants. In addition, older grants that met the criteria were closed and supplemental funding has been added to existing grants as appropriated.

Property Search

Find Property
When a Cooperative Agreement Recipient (CAR) clicks the “Find Property” tab, this feature now automatically filters the search results to list only properties in the CAR’s state. Previously the results listed all properties within the region. This update will reduce the amount of time it takes to display the results and also reduce the number of properties listed. The CAR can expand the search to include other states within the user’s region by clicking on additional state names or ALL in the filter. This improvement was requested by one of our ACRES CAR users.
View as Map
A new zoom and pan capability has been added to the property results map so that users are not constrained by their specific search criteria. To try this new feature, click the Find Property tab, reduce the number of properties selected using the filter (e.g. select a CA type of “Assessments” and announcement years of 2010-2012), and click the View as Map tab. Zoom out on the map using your mouse (or drag the zoom bar on the left side of the map) and you’ll notice other ACRES properties are displayed on the map which are located outside the original search area.

Property Profile Form (PPF) – Page 2

Observant users will notice that grant specific sections on the PPF (page 2) contain a new green section title box. Grant specific sections include Assessment, Cleanup and Redevelopment funding sections. Grant universal sections still have the ACRES blue box. This differentiates the two so that when users update their property information, they can recognize that changing some fields will affect more than just the property they are working on (universal fields).

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.220) was released Wednesday, November 12th.

All ACRES Users

ACRES Connection Timeout Extended
The connection timeout for ACRES has been extended to 2 hours. This will allow users who are entering detailed text or financial information more time to complete their data entry without worrying about being logged off. Typically for computer applications, connections are closed (timed out) after 5 minutes of inactivity to ensure that connections do not stay open indefinitely.

ACRES Quarterly Bulletin
The ACRES Quarterly Bulletin was distributed by email on Thursday, October 30th. It highlights successes in ACRES and provides tips for using the system. If you are not currently on the distribution list and would like to be, please send a request to ACRES_Help@epa.gov.

Property Profile Form (PPF) Geographic Info just got easier
For users interested in fine tuning the location of a property, the Google map pin on the PPF (Part 1) can now be dragged and dropped which will update the propertys latitude and longitude. For cases where the property is large or the actual contamination may be at the back of a property or the actual location is a short distance from the location marked on the map, this new feature will allow the user to move the pin point to the exact site location on the property. To use this feature, click the Edit Fields link on the propertys PPF, Part 1 in the Property Geographic Information section. Then click and hold the pin point, drag to the new location and release. The lat/long is automatically updated.
Note: the property address is not updated when the pin point is relocated.

Automated Quarterly Report
This new automated report has been beta tested by several pioneers and some improvements will be added before the report is available for all cleanup grant users.
- Project Progress Task Names
  This first improvement allows the user to enter their own task names (instead of using prepopulated names that may or may not match the names the region has used in the past). These names will be retained for all of the Cooperative Agreements reporting quarters. The names can also be edited should the user decide to change the task title.
- An informational line has been added to the top of the report to notify users that attachments need to be emailed to the Project Officer. Supporting documents cannot be attached to ACRES at this time

Project Officers

Find Cooperative Agreement Tab
The header on the Find Cooperative Agreement (CA) tab results page now displays the CA number information that was entered in the search filter. This allows the user to quickly view the selection criteria on the results listing.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.210) was released Tuesday, October 14th

All ACRES Users

ACRES Automated Quarterly Report
This new feature has been released to several pioneers for testing the capture of quarterly report information for FY2015, Quarter 1. Feedback from the first users will be incorporated into the report over the next several months to ensure the report meets user needs. The first grants to have automated report capability will be cleanup grants only. Other grant types will have automated report capability rolled out during 2015.
The automated report will be available to all CAR and Project Officer (PO) users for their cleanup Cooperative Agreements (CA) beginning 2nd quarter of 2015.
- CARS a new button will be displayed in the Profile Information section of the CA Home page. When the user clicks the button, the new report will allow them to enter information for Project Progress, Funding, Narratives, and Property-Specific
- POs a new tab titled Quarterly Reports to Review will be displayed on the Project Officer tab bar. The new tab will list any quarterly reports submitted by CARs that are the POs responsibility to review. A link is provided to each report which will provide a display of all report fields and an option to either approve the report or return it to the CAR with a request to clarify report information.
- Once the Quarterly Reports have been approved, they will be available to both the CAR and PO to view/print in PDF format from the CA Home page.

Property Profile Form (PPF) Text Fields
Text area fields are now updating correctly. Previously, if the user wanted to update the Property Highlights or History text boxes for a property associated to multiple CAs, validation sometimes prevented changes from being saved.

CARs

A Help icon is available for Leveraged Funding fields. The new icon is available wherever a leveraged funding is found on the Property Profile Form (PPF), Property Home, and Cooperative Agreement Home pages. The help text displayed is:
The term "leveraged" refers to those non-EPA Brownfields funds that have some link or nexus to the efforts of an EPA cooperative agreement-funded activity. (State/tribal 128a funding, Targeted Brownfields Assessments, Brownfields RLF loans/subgrants, or any other EPA Brownfields grants or resources provided by other project partners are NOT counted as leveraged.)
A Help icon now provides an explanation for the acres cleaned up field on the PPF, Part 2. The help text displayed is:
The number of acres that have been cleaned up is only the acreage for the portion of the property that has been addressed by environmental cleanup activities. A property is considered cleaned up when it is made available for reuse as a result of the environmental cleanup activity.

Project Officers

JT Training for POs
A refresher on ACRES Job Training was provided to EPA POs on September 25th. The PowerPoint presentation used during the training has been added to the ACRES Information page. To access the presentation, simply click on the link for ACRES 5.0 Training for Job Training Project Officers.

Project Officer Module
The Place of Performance section, which is no longer used, has been removed from all the JT screens including data entry and review/submit & approve screens.

Administrators

Cooperative Agreement Funding Update
The ability to correct initial funding amounts and to add supplemental funding to a CA has been added to the Admin utility tab. This will allow the Admins to quickly correct funding information discrepancies.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.190) was released Tuesday, August 19th

All ACRES Users

A small amount of older supplemental funding was determined to be missing from ACRES this month. It resulted in a discrepancy between the funding reported in ACRES and the funding reported in the IGMS files. ACRES has been updated and the discrepancy resolved.

Project Officers

Project Officer Module
The Project Officer (PO) module, accessed when the Manage this Cooperative Agreement button is clicked, has been simplified so its functions are much easier for the PO to both access and use. Functions that were not useful were removed (7 of the 10 functions). Information for the remaining 3 functions displays on a single page with collapsible sections. Links to the sections are available on the left side bar.
The three PO Module functions are:
1. Anticipated Performance Measures (not applicable for Job Training grants)
2. Sustainability Information this is currently a place marker for a new feature be added in the near future
3. Closeout as well as grant status, closing project officer name, and closeout date, this section now contains 2 text areas to record:
  1. Any Quarterly/Other Reports and Forms not Received
  2. Lessons Learned
The associated Review and Submit page has also been updated. It is shorter and easier to read. The page allows the PO to click a link to return to any section that might need updating before submitting for National Review/Approval.
The PO module is available to project officers only for the Cooperative Agreements (CAs) for which the PO is the primary contact.

My Regional Cooperative Agreements tab
This tab has been modified to initially display only the cooperative agreements for which the PO is the primary contact and/or data reviewer. A new link is available at the bottom of the page that allows the user to see all associated CAs to which the PO is associated but not the primary contact/data reviewer. Click the link to display the associated CAs, and then click the Hide link to remove them from view.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.150) was released Tuesday, April 29th.

All ACRES Users

Grant Fact Sheet Search
In 2010, the EPA Brownfields Area-Wide Planning Pilot Project provided funding for 23 communities to develop area-wide plans and specific implementation strategies for integrating the cleanup and reuse of Brownfields sites into neighborhood revitalization efforts. This information was not originally available for the Grant Fact Sheet Search (GFS). It has been extracted from individual links on the Brownfields Area-Wide Planning Program screen and can now be viewed from the GFS. To view this information, from the GFS (http://cfpub.epa.gov/bf_factsheets/index.cfm), use the filters to select a grant type of Area-Wide Planning and a grant announcement year of 2010.

Project Officers

Project Officer Home Page
A new column has been added to the Regional Accomplishments for FY 14 table located at the top of the Home page. It lists counts/dollars for Pending Accomplishments for ALL Fiscal Years. Prior to this release, there was a column that listed pending accomplishment counts for the current fiscal year only. Because of the way the FCA procedure works, some properties will have FY11, FY12 or FY13 listed as the draft FCA fiscal year. These accomplishments were not included in the pending accomplishment count which made it difficult to get a full picture of what is pending. The addition of the new column provides a more accurate view of the number of pending accomplishments that are not yet approved.
More detailed information on work packages with pending accomplishments can be found on the Regional Status tab.

ACRES Project Officer Training Slides
A new training presentation, similar to those for new ACRES users and experienced ACRES users, has been added to the EPA's ACRES Information page under Training & Tutorials. A Quick Reference Guide (PDF) is planned for the near future with more detailed information including answers to typical questions posed to the Help Desk and tips on how to avoid common mistakes made by project officers.

Administrators

Cooperative Agreement Update
Selected Administrators now have the ability to quickly update the POP end dates (because they are sometimes extended for grants) and funding amounts (which also sometimes change).

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.130) was released Tuesday, March 4th.

All ACRES Users

Job Training (JT) Home Page
The JT total funded amount is now displayed in the profile information section of the JT Home page.

Program Accomplishment Report (PAR)
This report has been improved to execute faster. Users will notice 2 new buttons at the bottom of the PAR page – one to generate the report as an Excel spreadsheet and a second to generate the report as a tree. For users who want to only print a spreadsheet, this saves considerable time. Previously you had to wait until the tree report was completed before the Export to Excel feature was available. The report is slated for some needed format improvements in the near future.

Note that if you wish to sort the spreadsheet, you need to highlight the data rows only (exclude the column title row at the top of the page and the totals line at the bottom of the report) and then use the Excel sort/extract features. To highlight the data rows, holding down the <Shift> key, click on the first data field in the spreadsheet (column A, row 7), scroll to the bottom of the spreadsheet and click the last data field (column I, row number will vary) and all data rows will be highlighted.

ACRES Quarterly Bulletin
The February 2014 ACRES Bulletin was distributed by email on Thursday, February 6th. It highlights successes in ACRES and provides tips for using the system. If you are not currently on the distribution list and would like to be, please send a request to ACRES_Help@epa.gov.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.120) was released Tuesday, February 4th.

All ACRES Users

Add/Associate a New Property
CAR users who are adding a property to one of their associated CAs will notice that the CA number field is now auto-populated on the Find Property/Add a New Property page. This simplifies the association process.

RLF Program Income Funding
If a loan has been made for any property under a given RLF grant, then the program income funding options appear for ALL properties associated with that CA. Previously, these options became available only after RLF Grant Funds Loaned was added to a property. This improvement is a request out of Region 1.

Latitude/Longitude Updates Complete
The last region that needed to provide lat/long updates has completed the task and the 2 year lat/long correction effort is finally complete.

Project Officers

Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements
A new report column has been added to display Total Grant Amount. Previously there were 2 columns to display award amounts, one for Hazardous and the other for Petroleum funding types. These funding types are not applicable to grants that are Section 128(a) State/Tribal, Job Training or Area Wide Planning (previously their funding was displayed in the Hazardous column and can now be found in the new total column).

Grant amounts for the ARC grants continue to display in the Hazardous and Petroleum award columns, and a summary in the new Total Grant Amount field.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.110) was released Tuesday, January 14th.

All ACRES Users

The 2013 grants have been added to the ACRES database and are ready for updating!
On the Property Home page, the number of Cleanup Jobs Leveraged now displays in the Cleanup Activities section of the page, directly under the Total ACRES Cleaned Up field.

Project Officers

The Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements has a new Project Officer filter that allows users to display data assigned to a specific project officer (the default is for all officers). Also, for users that have responsibility for multiple regions, the report tabs that have a small number of CAs such as the TBA, Area Wide Planning and Multi-Purpose tabs, will display all CAs for the grant type instead of only one region at a time. These tabs typically have less than a dozen CAs to display.

Administrators and Project Officers

An improvement has been added to the Change Owners function so that the ownership of a work package can be changed from one CAR to another without the loss of any data including regional reviewer comments. Previously, reviewer comments were lost when the ownership changed and a package was in Requires Clarification Regional Review status. This change was made in response to help desk emails from Region 7 staff.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.100) was released Tuesday, December 17th.

All ACRES Users

On the Property Profile Form Page 2, the "Recalculate" buttons have been removed from the Acres Cleaned Up, the Number of Cleanup Jobs Leveraged, and the Number of Redevelopment Jobs Leveraged fields. The buttons were used for a past function that is now obsolete.

Project Officers

The Regional Status tab results page now features an Export to Excel function. Project Officers can create a spreadsheet and then use Excel tools to sort, extract and print regional data in any format they choose. This feature has been added to ACRES at the request of several users who said it would be helpful to see all outstanding work packages in the region on one spreadsheet.

An update was completed to the Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements to ensure that all CAs with an assigned project officer have the officers name displayed on the report.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.090) was released Tuesday, November 12th.

All ACRES Users

The November 2013 ACRES Bulletin was distributed by email on Friday, November 1st. If you are not currently on the distribution list and would like to be, please send a request to acres_help@epa.gov.

Project Officers

The Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements has several new helpful features:

The report has a new tab that displays data for TBAs. It includes the accomplishment year and project end date.
To make it easier to view the CAs assigned to specific project officers, the project officer column has been moved to the front of the report. The column is sortable so all CAs assigned to an officer can be viewed/printed together.
Two new fields have been added to the report number of jobs leveraged and number of dollars leveraged. These are displayed on the right side of the report, next to cleanup jobs leveraged.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.080) was released Tuesday, September 17th.

CARS and EPA Users

RLF Grants New Funding Source Options
In the last release, two new funding source options were made available:
- USEPA Brownfields RLF Program Income Loaned
- USEPA Brownfields RLF Program Income Subgranted
Program income is the amount of money received by the recipient, either directly generated by the RLF award, or earned during the period of the award (between the effective date of award and ending date of the cooperative agreement). RLF recipients must use program income according to the terms and conditions set forth in their cooperative agreement.

More details have been added to ACRES for these options.
- A date field (optional) is now available
- The "Name of Entity Providing Funds" field is automatically set to the CAR organization
- A help icon is available to explain what qualifies as Program Income
- Program income options appear only if a "USEPA Brownfields RLF Grant Funds Loaned" has already been added for the property
- A separate summary line for Program Income is now displayed on the Property Profile Form, the Review & Submit screens for reviewers, the Property Home page and the Cooperative Agreement page.

Latitude/Longitude Corrections
Thanks to the regional staff who researched property lat/long information, approximately 2000 ACRES properties have been updated with improved lat/long data. The staffs hard work helped eliminate the data entry errors created when lat/long values were hand calculated or obtained from other sources. ACRES now uses Googlemaps to autogenerate the lat/long values, based on the property address. This method is very accurate. ACRES users can also easily update the lat/long on the Property Profile Form screen if needed.

Zip Code Corrections
Approximately 230 properties have zip code corrections, most due to a missing leading zero. The updated properties were almost all in the Northeast where the zip codes start with zero.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at acres_help@epa.gov or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.070) was released Tuesday, August 20th.

CARS and EPA Users

CAR Navigation
When a CAR navigates to a specific Cooperative Agreement (CA) and submits a work package for review, ACRES will now return to the CA Home page (ACRES used to return to the CAR Home page). This improvement will save the CAR time when they want to create/submit more work packages for that same CA, which is often the case. This improvement also reduces the potential for entering data under the wrong grant.

PPF Page 2: Indicate Whether Cleanup is Necessary?
If "Unknown" is selected for this important field, the user must also select a reason for unknown. The wording for two of the reasons has been modified for clarity:
- Old reason: No end use known
  New reason: End use not yet determined
- Old reason: Property is not marketable
  New reason: Property marketability is not established at this time

Job Training Performance Measures
Three new Job Training fields were added during the last release, including "Number Participants Entering Training". A data validation ensured that there were at least as many participants entering training as completing it. A change was made to ignore this validation process for quarters prior to the 4th quarter 2013 (before data for the new field were recorded).

RLF Grants New Funding Source Options
For RLF grants, the first two options in the cleanup funding source dropdown list were:
- USEPA Brownfields RLF Loan
- USEPA Brownfields RLF Subgrant

These first two options have been re-named and two new options for program income are now available:
- USEPA Brownfields RLF Grant Funds Loaned
- USEPA Brownfields RLF Grant Funds Subgranted
- USEPA Brownfields RLF Program Income Loaned
- USEPA Brownfields RLF Program Income Subgranted

July 23, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.060

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.060) was released Tuesday, July 23rd.

CARS and EPA Users

PPF Page 2: Contaminants & Media Affected Information
The option to select Arsenic has been moved from the "Other Contaminants" list to the "Other Metals" list. In addition, periodic symbols have been added for the two newest "other metals" Arsenic (As) and Mercury (Hg).

EPA/National Users

QA Property Information Page
In the review data function, the redevelopment costs have been reformatted to display as nicely as the cleanup cost section. You will notice that the funding information is displayed in wider rows, spaced out for clarity, and the rows alternate in color (blue/white). This should make it much easier to read redevelopment funding information.

June 25, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.050

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.050) was released Tuesday, June 25th.

This version contains release of the 2013 Job Training Grant Fact Sheets and also changes to the Job Training form (JT).

2013 Job Training Grant Fact Sheets
The 2013 Job Training Grant Fact Sheets (GFS), a total of 16, were released on June 13th. Several formatting enhancements have been made to the PDF version of the JT document for easier viewing.

Job Training Form - Job Measurements Section
As with the Property Profile Form in the last release (5.00.040), the JTs associated paper form is evaluated every three years for new data fields needed and modifications to improve the work flow. The changes listed below are the result of your feedback, needs identified by the ACRES Team, and the approval process.
- Three new measurement fields have been added:
  1. Number of Participants Entering Training
  2. Number of Veterans Entering Training
  3. Number of Individuals that did not Obtain Employment but are Pursuing Education (e.g., GED, college courses, etc.)
- Verification has been added to ensure that the total number of participants completing training is not greater than the number of participants entering training. Also, average hourly pay is required for reporting quarters that have participants obtaining jobs.
- Help text has been added for several of the measurement fields, including the Weighted Average Hourly Wage. Youll also notice the layout has been updated and is easier to read.

All Users

ACRES Comment Fields
The size of the font for ACRES comment fields has been made uniform for all fields. Previously the font for a couple of comments (e.g. the Regional Reviewers comment box for returning a work package for clarification) was tiny and difficult to read.

May 29, 2013 ACRES v. 5.00.040

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.040) was released Wednesday, May 29th.

This version contains changes to the Property Profile Form (PPF). The PPF and its associated paper form are evaluated every three years for new data fields needed and modifications to improve the work flow. The PPF undergoes a rigorous evaluation and approval process. The changes listed below are the result of your feedback, needs identified by the ACRES Team, and the approval process.

Indicate Whether Cleanup is Necessary new Reason field if cleanup unknown
This important field has three options (one must be selected): Yes, No, Unknown. If you select "Unknown", ACRES will prompt you to select a reason from a list of possibilities. If your reason isnt on the list, simply select "Other" and you can enter your reason in the text entry box provided.

Contaminants & Media Affected Information more selection options available
- Two new contaminant classes have been added to the list of options for Contaminants: Pesticides and SVOCs.
- Two new media types have been added to the selection options for Media: Building Materials and Indoor Air. A help icon has been added to the Building Materials field to provide clarification for this option. It is defined as:
  - Hazardous building materials include materials that were once intentionally used to construct, renovate, or maintain a building that are now known to be hazardous or contain hazardous substances. Common examples include asbestos, PCBs, mercury, and lead paint.
- "Other" Metals and Contaminants now have selection options available:
  - For Contaminants, click the box for "select a contaminant". A text box is displayed where you can type in any other contaminant you wish to enter.
  - For Metals, click the box for "select a metal" and a list of metal options displays. You may select as many as apply from the following : Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Cobalt (Co), Copper (Cu), Mercury, Nickel (Ni), Selenium (Se), Zinc (Zn), Iron (Fe). If there are other metals not on this list, type the information in the text box provided.

Cleanup and Redevelopment Funding New Field Available
A new text field, Activity Funded, has been added to both the Cleanup Funding Information and Redevelopment Funding Information screens to provide more space to describe the activities. Youll notice that the title for the field adjacent to the new field has been shortened from "Name of Entity Providing Funds and Additional Comments (if applicable)" to "Name of Entity Providing Funds".

Environmental Cleanup Information
- Cleanup Completion Documentation Type New Field
  When a cleanup is completed and the associated date is entered on the PPF, the user is now prompted to select the cleanup completion documentation type(s). The two options appear at the top of the Cleanup Information section next to the completion date At least one must be selected. The options are:
  - No Further Action Letter
  - Environmental Professional Certified
- New Cleanup Funding Type - Cost Share
  A new cleanup funding type, Cost Share, is available on the Cleanup "Add Funding" and "Update Funding" screens. It is available ONLY for Cleanup and RLF cooperative agreements. This is not a leveraged fund so totals for this cost share are displayed on a separate line on the PPF and QA review pages.
- Subgrant Issuance Date New Field
  The "Add Funding" and "Update Funding" screens, for RLF cooperative agreements ONLY, have been updated to include a new field Subgrant Issuance Date (this is similar to the RLF loan issuance date). It has been added so that the subgrant can be entered into ACRES during the time period before an actual draw is made under the subgrant (since dollars are entered for draws, not loan/subgrant amounts).
- Redevelopment & Other Leveraged Accomplishments Simplified
  This section has been simplified a bit. The "Future Use and Estimated Acreage" and "Actual Greenspace Acreage and Type" fields have been merged into one table "Future Use, Planned, and Actual Acreage". The old information for Actual Greenspace acreage data has been merged into the new table and any text previously entered has been moved to the Property Highlights text box. Note that there were very few properties that had "actual" data to be merged
  
  The column for multi-story building data now has an area to allow total building square footage to be captured.

April 5, 2013 ACRES v. 5.00.020

A new release of ACRES (v. 5.00.020) was released Friday, April 5th. Below is a summary of the changes that have been made to the system.

All Users

Cancelled Grants
The display of a Cooperative Agreements (CA) status on ACRES pages has been updated and now includes a new icon for CAs that have been cancelled. The "open" icon was also changed to make the status more intuitive. Here are the icons now used to denote CA status:
Closed: Open: Cancelled:

"Cancelled Grants" has also been added as a filter option on the "Find Property/Cooperative Agreement" tab. The new option can be found in the Cooperative Agreement Status filter section (added to options: Open, Closed and All).

EPA Reviewers

Email Preferences
A new email preference option has been added for EPA reviewers to help identify work packages returned to the grantees for clarification and which still remain in this status. The option allows the reviewer to select the number of days for filtering the workpackages to be displayed:
If a work package I returned for clarification has been in the same status for more than days

April 5, 2013 ACRES v. 5.00.010

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.010) was released Friday, April 5th. Below is a summary of the changes that have been made to the system.

All Users

WAM Replaces CDX for ACRES Log In
A new authentication tool, Web Access Management (WAM), has been installed. WAM provides several important benefits to ACRES users:
- Users now directly access the ACRES Log In page there is no longer an intermediary CDX log in page.
- Registration of new ACRES users, especially EPA users, will be much faster.
- Response for problem resolution will be faster. There is now only one Help Desk to contact for issues.
- Accounts for users with multiple accounts have been consolidated into a single account.
Quick Reference Guides (QRG) and Training Videos
- Updated! All QRGs and videos have been updated on the ACRES Information Page (http://www.epa.gov/acres/index.htm) to reflect the new log in information and all changes to ACRES since October 2011.

CARs

My Cooperative Agreements Tab
The listing of CAs is now displayed in order by award date so that the most recent CAs will appear at the top of the list. The order used to be random. This will make it easier to access the records used most frequently.

February 5, 2013 ACRES v. 4.01.120

A new version of ACRES (v. 4.01.120) was released Tuesday, February 5th. Below is a summary of the changes that have been made to the system.

All Users

ACRES Quarterly Bulletin
The January 2013 ACRES Bulletin was distributed on Tuesday, January 15th. Prior issues are available using the "View Previous Bulletins" link. If you are not on the distribution list and would like to be added, please contact the ACRES Help Desk (see contact information below).

Property Home
A correction was made to the Property Home page. Under uncommon circumstances, the Total Funding field for Assessment Activities or Cleanup Activities was shown as doubled. This was a data display error for this page only and did not affect the actual funding totals.

January 8, 2013 ACRES v. 4.01.110

A new version of ACRES (v. 4.01.110) was released Tuesday, January 8th. Below is a summary of the changes that have been made to the system.

All Users

ACRES Bulletin Archive Now Available
On all new ACRES Bulletins, a link is available at the top of the page which allows you to access previous bulletins. Click the “View Previous Bulletins” tab for the ability to review prior success stories, features and Frank’s Tips.
Latitude/Longitude Corrections
Earlier in 2012, ACRES property records were scanned to identify potential lat/long errors. Over 4,000 properties were identified with problems, and 2,900 of these were reviewed by EPA interns and ACRES Team staff to verify recommended corrections. Of those reviewed, 70% were determined to be correct. These corrections were applied to the property database in December. The remaining 30% will undergo further investigation.

CAR and EPA Users

Review and Submit
At the top of the Review & Submit page, a new message reminds you that there is a second Submit button to click before the property or grant submit process is complete.

The submitting property/grant process for review is multi-step. The first time you click a Submit button, ACRES displays the property/grant information, highlighting all data that was updated. This gives you a chance to double-check that all new data and updates have been included. Once verified, the second click actually submits the property for review.

The button names have been improved to make the multi-step a little more obvious. The first "Review & Submit” button has been changed to “Go to Review & Submit”. The second button is “Submit Data Now” for properties, and “Proceed to Submit" for JT and grants (the latter two have an additional page to collect signature information).

December 7, 2012 ACRES v. 4.01.100

A new version of ACRES (v. 4.01.100) was released Friday, December 7th. Below is a summary of the changes that have been made to the system.

CAR Users

My Email Preferences Link
Two options on a CAR user’s email preferences have been disabled so that the user will automatically receive an email message alerting them that specific work packages need their attention. The options are:
- If a work package I am editing has been in the same status for more than 30 days
- If a work package I submitted has been returned for clarification
All other options remain available for selection but are regrouped under a new header, “You may elect to receive an email when the following occurs:”.

Project Officers

Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements
Two new features have been added to this report. Regional users now have the option to view Open, Closed or All Cooperative Agreements (CAs) on the report. Previously only Open CAs were displayed. In addition, pagination options have been added at the bottom of the page so that on long reports, users won’t have to scroll through a long list of CAs.
Job Training Home Page - New Manage CA Button
Project officers will notice a new button on the JT Home page for accessing CA Management functions (e.g. managing contacts, funding, and closeout). The button makes it easier to find the management tool. Previously, the user accessed a link titled: Cooperative Agreement Profile Information (View | Enter Data). The link for viewing the information (available to all project officers) has been renamed to View Cooperative Agreement Profile Information.
Place of Performance for Job Training Awards
A new link has been added to the “Manage this Cooperative Agreement” function. Titled “Place of Performance”, it will store geodata and address information related to the place(s) of performance for JT awards, so that all Brownfields program awards are in compliance with GPI 12-02.

November 9, 2012 ACRES v. 4.01.090

A new version of ACRES (v. 4.01.090) was released Friday, November 9th. Below is a summary of the changes that have been made to the system.

All Users

Contact Us link
This page has been updated with new contact information. It includes a link to the ACRES home page which provides access to useful help resources including Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), Quick Reference Guides (QRGs), and training videos.
Feedback
A new link at the top of every ACRES page provides users with a quick means of sending a request to the ACRES Help Desk. The feedback feature automatically creates a help ticket and then returns an email notifying the user that the request information was received. To use the feature, click Feedback, select the type of problem (suggestion, issue, policy question), enter a description, and click the Submit button.

CARs

Property Profile Form (PPF)
A message has been added to the Cleanup Funding section. When the funding is added or updated, a message is displayed on the page to remind users that Cost Share funding is not to be included in leveraged funding. Later this year, when the PPF Upgrades are implemented, there will be a new Funding Source to capture Cost Share amounts (amount will not be included in leveraged funding).

Project Officers

Utility Menu - new Regional Performance Report on Open Cooperative Agreements
A new report is available to display the regional performance of open cooperative agreements (CAs). This report provides basic cooperative agreement information (state, recipient, CA number, dates, etc.), grant amounts both awarded and paid to date, and the numbers of assessment, cleanups, and redevelopments. It has a link to the home page for each Cooperative Agreement so the user can access more detailed CA and/or property information. It also displays two amounts paid - one extracted from Compass (formerly the Federal Data Warehouse) and the other from ACRES. If a project officer has access to more than one region, the officer is prompted to select the region they would like to see reported. Note that all columns are sortable so the user can display the report in any order needed. If you’d like to sort on multiple columns at the same time, click to select the first column, and then holding the <Shift> key down, click additional columns. The report is also exportable to Excel (the user can format in Excel as needed and print the report).

Currently the report lists only open CAs but the option to display closed CAs has been identified as a future upgrade.
Home Page - Regional Status Tab
The Regional Status page displays “Status Since” fields in red if the work packages have remained in the same status for more than 90 days. An explanation for the red text now appears above the data table (previously available through use of a help icon). The Status Since column can be sorted by date to help the user manage work package data.
Cooperative Agreement Home Page - New Manage CA Button
Project officers will notice a new button on the CA Home page for accessing CA Management functions (e.g. managing contacts, funding, anticipated performance, and closeout). The button makes it easier to find the management tool. Previously, the user accessed a link titled: Cooperative Agreement Profile Information (View | Enter Data). The link for viewing the information (available to all project officers) has been renamed to View Cooperative Agreement Profile Information.

ADMIN

Home Page
Two updates have been made to the Administrators’ tools.
1. Change Status Page
  The Cooperative Agreement number and Recipient Name are now listed in individual columns. The CA data can be sorted by either column.
2. Change Owner Page
  Similar to the Change Status Page, the Cooperative Agreement number and Recipient Name are now listed in individual columns and the data is sortable by either.
Data Quality Measures (DQM) - Help Desk Numbers
A new tab has been added to the Data Quality Measures that will display a bar chart of Help Desk Activities. The graphic page highlights Help Desk activity during the past 3 months, and shows “Issues by User Type” as well as “Issues by Component”.

October 5, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.080

A new version of ACRES (v. 4.01.080) was released Friday, October 5th. Below is a summary of the changes that have been made to the system.

CA Home Page

Help icons with explanatory text have been added for the “Actual Amount” and “Cooperative Agreement Summary” fields in the Cooperative Agreement Anticipated Performance section. These were added to assist users in providing correct information for these fields.

The help icons are also available on the Anticipated Performance data input screen (Project Officer Module).

Project Officer Home Page - Regional Status Tab

Two improvements have been made to the Regional Status page:

The Regional Status page now displays the name of the Project Officer associated with each work package. This is especially useful for work packages that have an “Edits in Progress” status.
Work packages that have remained in the same status for more than 90 days now have the “Status Since” fields displayed in red. This is a gentle reminder that the work packages need attention.

Area-Wide Planning CAs

Because Area-Wide Planning (AWP) CAs are unique, several changes have been made to the AWP Home page.

A new section has been added to display leveraged funding information. The leveraged funding is entered via the PO Module - Funding page (available to POs only). This new section will appear only for AWP CAs.
Several sections which are not applicable to AWPs do not display on the Home page. These include CA Accomplishments, Assessment/Cleanup/Redevelopment Activities, and Institutional and Engineering Controls.

ADMIN Home Page

Two updates have been implemented to save Administrators time.

Change Status Page

The Property ID now displays on the Change Status page. CARs and EPA Project Officers often forget to include this important data when requesting a status change. As a result, Admins had to spend time manually searching for the associated ID.
Change Owner Page

Similar to the Change Status Page, the Property ID now displays on the Change Owner Page, saving the Admins time and frustration.

Brownfields Assessment, Cleanup and Redevelopment Exchange System (ACRES) Release Notes

January 8, 2013  ACRES v. 4.01.110

December 7, 2012  ACRES v. 4.01.100

November 9, 2012  ACRES v. 4.01.090

October 5, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.080

September 7, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.070

August 6, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.060

June 13, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.050

May 11, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.040

April 13, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.030

Program Accomplishment Report (PAR)

CA Home Page

Property Home Page

Profile Property Form

March 9, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.020

February 10, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.01.010

January 20, 2012 - ACRES v. 4.00.110

December 8, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.100

November 3, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.090

October 7, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.080

September 7, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.070

August 4, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.060

July 1, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.050

May 18, 2011 - ACRES v. 4.00.042

June 17, 2010 - ACRES v. 4.00.040

April 9, 2010 - ACRES v. 4.00.030

January 31, 2010 - ACRES v. 4.00.020

January 8, 2013 ACRES v. 4.01.110

December 7, 2012 ACRES v. 4.01.100

November 9, 2012 ACRES v. 4.01.090