Arizona Laws 49-241. Permit required to discharge
A. Unless otherwise provided by this article, any person who discharges or who owns or operates a facility that discharges shall obtain an aquifer protection permit from the director.
Terms Used In Arizona Laws 49-241
- Appropriation: The provision of funds, through an annual appropriations act or a permanent law, for federal agencies to make payments out of the Treasury for specified purposes. The formal federal spending process consists of two sequential steps: authorization
- Aquifer: means a geologic unit that contains sufficient saturated permeable material to yield usable quantities of water to a well or spring. See Arizona Laws 49-201
- Department: means the department of environmental quality. See Arizona Laws 49-201
- Director: means the director of environmental quality or the director's designee. See Arizona Laws 49-201
- Evidence: Information presented in testimony or in documents that is used to persuade the fact finder (judge or jury) to decide the case for one side or the other.
- Facility: means any land, building, installation, structure, equipment, device, conveyance, area, source, activity or practice from which there is, or with reasonable probability may be, a discharge. See Arizona Laws 49-201
- including: means not limited to and is not a term of exclusion. See Arizona Laws 1-215
- Permit: means a written authorization issued by the director or prescribed by this chapter or in a rule adopted under this chapter stating the conditions and restrictions governing a discharge or governing the construction, operation or modification of a facility. See Arizona Laws 49-201
- Person: means an individual, employee, officer, managing body, trust, firm, joint stock company, consortium, public or private corporation, including a government corporation, partnership, association or state, a political subdivision of this state, a commission, the United States government or any federal facility, interstate body or other entity. See Arizona Laws 49-201
- Pollutant: means fluids, contaminants, toxic wastes, toxic pollutants, dredged spoil, solid waste, substances and chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and other agricultural chemicals, incinerator residue, sewage, garbage, sewage sludge, munitions, petroleum products, chemical wastes, biological materials, radioactive materials, heat, wrecked or discarded equipment, rock, sand, cellar dirt and mining, industrial, municipal and agricultural wastes or any other liquid, solid, gaseous or hazardous substances. See Arizona Laws 49-201
- Vadose zone: means the zone between the ground surface and any aquifer. See Arizona Laws 49-201
- Well: means a bored, drilled or driven shaft, pit or hole whose depth is greater than its largest surface dimension. See Arizona Laws 49-201
B. Unless exempted under section 49-250, or unless the director determines that the facility will be designed, constructed and operated so that there will be no migration of pollutants directly to the aquifer or to the vadose zone, the following are considered to be discharging facilities and shall be operated pursuant to either an individual permit or a general permit, including agricultural general permits, under this article:
1. Surface impoundments, including holding, storage settling, treatment or disposal pits, ponds and lagoons.
2. Solid waste disposal facilities except for mining overburden and wall rock that has not been and will not be subject to mine leaching operations.
3. Injection wells.
4. Land treatment facilities.
5. Facilities that add a pollutant to a salt dome formation, salt bed formation, dry well or underground cave or mine.
6. Mine tailings piles and ponds.
7. Mine leaching operations.
8. Underground water storage facilities.
9. Sewage treatment facilities, including on-site wastewater treatment facilities.
10. Wetlands designed and constructed to treat municipal and domestic wastewater for underground storage.
C. The director shall provide public notice and an opportunity for public comment on any request for a determination from the director under subsection B of this section that there will be no migration of pollutants from a facility. A public hearing may be held at the discretion of the director if sufficient public comment warrants a hearing. The director may inspect and may require reasonable conditions and appropriate monitoring and reporting requirements for a facility managing pollutants that are determined not to migrate under subsection B of this section. The director may identify types of facilities, available technologies and technical criteria for facilities that will qualify for a determination. The director’s determination may be revoked on evidence that pollutants have migrated from the facility. The director may impose a review fee for a determination under subsection B of this section. Any issuance, denial or revocation of a determination may be appealed pursuant to section 49-323.
D. The director shall annually make the fee schedule for aquifer protection permit applications available to the public on request and on the department‘s website, and a list of the names and locations of the facilities that have filed applications for aquifer protection permits, with a description of the status of each application, is available to the public on request.
E. The director shall prescribe the procedures for aquifer protection permit applications and fee collection under this section. The director shall deposit, pursuant to sections 35-146 and 35-147, all monies collected under this section in the water quality fee fund established by section 49-210 and may authorize expenditures from the fund, subject to legislative appropriation, to pay reasonable and necessary costs of processing and issuing permits and administering the registration program.