Terms Used In Minnesota Statutes > Chapter 115 > WATER POLLUTION CONTROL ACT

• Affidavit: A written statement of facts confirmed by the oath of the party making it, before a notary or officer having authority to administer oaths.
• Agency: means the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Amendment: A proposal to alter the text of a pending bill or other measure by striking out some of it, by inserting new language, or both. Before an amendment becomes part of the measure, thelegislature must agree to it.
• Amortization: Paying off a loan by regular installments.
• Appeal: A request made after a trial, asking another court (usually the court of appeals) to decide whether the trial was conducted properly. To make such a request is "to appeal" or "to take an appeal." One who appeals is called the appellant.
• Appraisal: A determination of property value.
• Conviction: A judgement of guilt against a criminal defendant.
• Corporation: A legal entity owned by the holders of shares of stock that have been issued, and that can own, receive, and transfer property, and carry on business in its own name.
• court administrator: means the court administrator of the court in which the action or proceeding is pending, and "court administrator's office" means that court administrator's office. See Minnesota Statutes 645.44
• Damages: Money paid by defendants to successful plaintiffs in civil cases to compensate the plaintiffs for their injuries.
• Defendant: In a civil suit, the person complained against; in a criminal case, the person accused of the crime.
• Depository: means : (a) a disposal facility or stabilization and containment facility for hazardous waste as defined in section 115A. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Discharge: means the addition of any pollutant to the waters of the state or to any disposal system. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Discovery: Lawyers' examination, before trial, of facts and documents in possession of the opponents to help the lawyers prepare for trial.
• Disposal system: means a system for disposing of sewage, industrial waste and other wastes, and includes sewer systems and treatment works. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Equitable: Pertaining to civil suits in "equity" rather than in "law." In English legal history, the courts of "law" could order the payment of damages and could afford no other remedy. See damages. A separate court of "equity" could order someone to do something or to cease to do something. See, e.g., injunction. In American jurisprudence, the federal courts have both legal and equitable power, but the distinction is still an important one. For example, a trial by jury is normally available in "law" cases but not in "equity" cases. ^{Source: U.S. Courts}
• 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.
• Fair market value: The price at which an asset would change hands in a transaction between a willing, informed buyer and a willing, informed seller.
• Fee simple: Absolute title to property with no limitations or restrictions regarding the person who may inherit it.
• Groundwater: means water contained below the surface of the earth in the saturated zone including, without limitation, all waters whether under confined, unconfined, or perched conditions, in near-surface unconsolidated sediment or regolith, or in rock formations deeper underground. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Hazardous waste: means waste as defined in section 116. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Industrial waste: means any liquid, gaseous or solid waste substance resulting from any process of industry, manufacturing trade or business or from the development of any natural resource. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Injunction: An order of the court prohibiting (or compelling) the performance of a specific act to prevent irreparable damage or injury.
• Jurisdiction: (1) The legal authority of a court to hear and decide a case. Concurrent jurisdiction exists when two courts have simultaneous responsibility for the same case. (2) The geographic area over which the court has authority to decide cases.
• Litigation: A case, controversy, or lawsuit. Participants (plaintiffs and defendants) in lawsuits are called litigants.
• Partnership: A voluntary contract between two or more persons to pool some or all of their assets into a business, with the agreement that there will be a proportional sharing of profits and losses.
• Person: means the state or any agency or institution thereof, any municipality, governmental subdivision, public or private corporation, individual, partnership, or other entity, including, but not limited to, association, commission or any interstate body, and includes any officer or governing or managing body of any municipality, governmental subdivision, or public or private corporation, or other entity. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Person: may extend and be applied to bodies politic and corporate, and to partnerships and other unincorporated associations. See Minnesota Statutes 645.44
• Personal property: All property that is not real property.
• Plastic: means a synthetic material made from linking monomers through a chemical reaction to create a polymer chain that can be molded or extruded at high heat into various solid forms that retain their defined shapes during their life cycle and after disposal. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Point source: means any discernible, confined and discrete conveyance, including, but not limited to, any pipe, ditch, channel, tunnel, conduit, well, discrete fissure, container, rolling stock, concentrated animal feeding operation, or vessel or other floating craft, from which pollutants are or may be discharged. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Pollutant: means any sewage, industrial waste, or other wastes, as defined in this chapter, discharged into a disposal system or to waters of the state. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• pollute the water: means : (a) the discharge of any pollutant into any waters of the state or the contamination of any waters of the state so as to create a nuisance or render such waters unclean, or noxious, or impure so as to be actually or potentially harmful or detrimental or injurious to public health, safety or welfare, to domestic, agricultural, commercial, industrial, recreational or other legitimate uses, or to livestock, animals, birds, fish or other aquatic life; or (b) the alteration made or induced by human activity of the chemical, physical, biological, or radiological integrity of waters of the state. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Potable water: means water which is or may be used as a source of supply for human consumption including drinking, culinary use, food processing, and other similar purposes, and which is suitable for such uses in its untreated state or when treated using generally recognized treatment methods. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Public law: A public bill or joint resolution that has passed both chambers and been enacted into law. Public laws have general applicability nationwide.
• Public waters: means public waters as defined in section 103G. See Minnesota Statutes 645.44
• Radioactive waste: means high-level radioactive waste as defined in section 116C. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Real property: Land, and all immovable fixtures erected on, growing on, or affixed to the land.
• Remainder: An interest in property that takes effect in the future at a specified time or after the occurrence of some event, such as the death of a life tenant.
• Schedule of compliance: means a schedule of remedial measures including an enforceable sequence of actions or operations leading to compliance with an effluent limitation, other limitation, prohibition, or standard. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Settlement: Parties to a lawsuit resolve their difference without having a trial. Settlements often involve the payment of compensation by one party in satisfaction of the other party's claims.
• Sewage: means the water-carried waste products from residences, public buildings, institutions or other buildings, or any mobile source, including the excrementitious or other discharge from the bodies of human beings or animals, together with such groundwater infiltration and surface water as may be present. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Sewer system: means pipelines or conduits, pumping stations, and force mains, and all other constructions, devices, and appliances appurtenant thereto, used for conducting sewage or industrial waste or other wastes to a point of ultimate disposal. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Small business: means a business entity organized for profit, including but not limited to any individual, partnership, corporation, joint venture, association or cooperative, which entity:

  (1) is not an affiliate or subsidiary of a business dominant in its field of operation; and

  (2) has 20 or fewer full-time employees; or

  (3) in the preceding fiscal year has not had more than the equivalent of $1,000,000 in annual gross revenues; or

  (4) if the business is a technical or professional service, shall not have had more than the equivalent of $2,500,000 in annual gross revenues in the preceding fiscal year. See Minnesota Statutes 645.445

• Standards: means effluent standards, effluent limitations, standards of performance for new sources, water quality standards, pretreatment standards, and prohibitions. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• state: extends to and includes the District of Columbia and the several territories. See Minnesota Statutes 645.44
• Statute: A law passed by a legislature.
• Subpoena: A command to a witness to appear and give testimony.
• Testify: Answer questions in court.
• Testimony: Evidence presented orally by witnesses during trials or before grand juries.
• Toxic pollutants: means those pollutants, or combinations of pollutants, including disease-causing agents, which after discharge and upon exposure, ingestion, inhalation or assimilation into any organism, either directly from the environment or indirectly by ingestion through food chains, will, on the basis of information available to the agency, cause death, disease, behavioral abnormalities, cancer, genetic mutations, physiological malfunctions, including malfunctions in reproduction, or physical deformation, in such organisms or their offspring. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Treatment works: means any plant, disposal field, lagoon, dam, pumping station, constructed drainage ditch or surface water intercepting ditch, incinerator, area devoted to sanitary land fills, or other works not specifically mentioned herein, installed for the purpose of treating, stabilizing or disposing of sewage, industrial waste, or other wastes. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01
• Trial: A hearing that takes place when the defendant pleads "not guilty" and witnesses are required to come to court to give evidence.
• Verdict: The decision of a petit jury or a judge.
• Waters of the state: means all streams, lakes, ponds, marshes, watercourses, waterways, wells, springs, reservoirs, aquifers, irrigation systems, drainage systems and all other bodies or accumulations of water, surface or underground, natural or artificial, public or private, which are contained within, flow through, or border upon the state or any portion thereof. See Minnesota Statutes 115.01