CERS Document Upload Policy: CERS Business

Many of the Unified Program’s facility reporting requirements include the need for supplemental documentation beyond the fields defined in the Unified Program Data Dictionary/UPCFs (e.g., facility map, Emergency Response Plan, UST Response Plan, etc.). To support organizations/business providing these mandated documents in some fashion to their local regulators, CERS supports organizations either uploading the document(s), or indicating they are meeting the documentation requirements in some other approved fashion. Listed below are the policies that apply to businesses for document uploads into CERS.

Maximum Single Document Upload Size	25 MB A single document upload cannot exceed 25 MB. If a business needs to upload a larger document, they will need to divide it into smaller pieces of <25MB and upload each separately, or use an alternate location option.
Acceptable document file extensions/types	Documents: pdf, doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt, odt, ods, pptx, zip Graphics: .gif, jpeg, jpg, png, bmp, svg Generic Text: txt, rtf, htm, html, csv, xml Cal/EPA retains the right to reject or delete uploaded documents whose internal format does not match their file extension. Rejection could occur at the time of a document submittal, or may occur post-submittal, in which case the entire submittal element will automatically be Not Accepted and need to be resubmitted.
File/Data Compression Encouraged	Businesses are strongly encouraged to minimize the file size of their document uploads before they upload them into CERS. Techniques they could use include saving pictures or document scans at lower resolutions (e.g., JPEG, scanned PDFs), and use of ZIP files to compress one or more documents (as long as all zipped documents relate to the specified CERS document upload type (e.g., facility site map).
“Malicious” Files	Businesses are responsible for ensuring their document uploads do not contain viruses or other malicious elements. Cal/EPA retains the right to reject or delete “malicious” uploaded documents. Rejection could occur at the time of a document submittal, or may occur post-submittal. Cal/EPA will NOT guarantee organizations or regulators users will be alerted when malicious files are deleted post-submittal.
Non-Mandated Documents Uploads Not Supported	CERS only supports document uploads for the specific documents that must be reported by the facility owner/operator to meet their Unified Program reporting requirements. CERS2 is not intended as a repository of non-mandated documents. Abuse of this policy will result in submittals being marked as Not Accepted.
Automated Modification of Document Upload Format	To reduce storage costs, Cal/EPA reserves the right to modify the size or format of an original document upload providing the modification does not change the actual content. Techniques Cal/EPA may employ could include compressing documents into ZIP files, reducing the resolution of very high-resolution pictures, and or changing the file format of a document upload to a more space-efficient format.
Locally-Required Document Uploads	CERS includes the ability for an organization to upload one or more locally-required documents specific to a submittal element (e.g., UST, Business Plan, etc.) as required by their local regulator(s).