Wyoming Administrative Code › Agency 020 - Environmental Quality, Dept. of › Sub-Agency 0011 - Water Quality › Chapter 8 - QUALITY STANDARDS FOR WYOMING GROUND WATERS › Section 8-2 - Definitions

Current through July 13, 2024
The following definitions supplement those definitions
				  contained in Section
										35-11-103
				  of the Wyoming Environmental Quality Act.
(a) "Aquifer" means a zone, stratum or group
				of strata that can store and transmit water in sufficient quantities for a
				specific use.
(b) "Background"
				means the constituents or parameters and the concentrations or measurements
				that describe water quality and water quality variability prior to a subsurface
				discharge.
(c) "Below-Surface
				Receiver (Receiver)" means any zone, interval, formation or unit in the
				subsurface that can accept water or fluid from other sources.
(d) "Domestic Water" means a water that is
				suitable for uses, including but not limited to, drinking, gardening and other
				household uses, municipal uses and farmstead uses, including water used in the
				washing or hydro-cooling of farm products destined for human consumption on the
				farm, for sale on the fresh food market or for delivery to a processing plant
				for canning, freezing or other type of preparation prior to marketing.
				Classification of Domestic water does not mean that it meets the national
				drinking water standards.
(e)
				"Fluid" means any material that flows or moves whether semisolid liquid,
				sludge, gas or any other form or state.
(f) "Groundwater" means subsurface water that
				fills available openings in rock or soil materials such that they may be
				considered water saturated under hydrostatic pressure.
(g) "Groundwaters of the State" are all
				bodies of underground water that are wholly or partially within the boundaries
				of the State; Groundwaters of the State is synonymous with Groundwaters of
				Wyoming.
(h) "Hazardous Material
				(Substance)" means any matter of any description including petroleum related
				products and radioactive material (substance) that, when discharged into any
				waters of the State presents an imminent and substantial hazard to public
				health or welfare and shall include all materials (substances) so designated by
				the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Federal Register for March 13,
				1978 (Part III), Water Programs, Hazardous Substances.
(i) "Milliequivalents Per Liter," abbreviated
				meq/L, used to report the Residual Sodium Carbonate concentration in water used
				for irrigation, is defined as 0.001 of the equivalent weight of the ion per
				liter volume.
(j) "Milligrams Per
				Liter," abbreviated mg/L, means milligrams of solute per liter of solution --
				equivalent to parts per million assuming unit density of water.
(k) "Parameter" means one of a set of
				physical or chemical properties whose measured values determine the
				characteristics of a fluid.
(l)
				"pH" is a term to express the intensity of the acid or basic condition. A pH
				value of 7.0 at 25 degrees Celsius (C) is neutral, with pH's of less than 7.0
				progressively more acid and pH's of greater than 7.0 progressively more
				basic.
(m) "Picocuries Per Liter,"
				abbreviated pCi/L, is a measure of radioactivity of waters or fluids. A
				picocurie is equal to 10-12 curie; a curie is defined as 3.7 x 1010
				disintegrations per second.
(n)
				"Residual Sodium Carbonate", abbreviated RSC, is defined as twice the
				concentration of carbonate or bicarbonate a water would contain after
				subtracting an amount equivalent to the calcium plus the magnesium, and is a
				measure of potential hazard that exists when waters high in carbonate and
				bicarbonate and relatively low in calcium and magnesium are used for
				irrigation.
(o) "Sodium Adsorption
				Ratio", abbreviated SAR, of a water is defined by the U.S. Department of
				Agriculture Laboratory (1954) as: where ion concentrations are expressed in
				meq/L. The SAR predicts reasonably well the degree to which irrigation water
				tends to enter into cation-exchange reactions in soil.
(p) "Standard Unit", abbreviated s.u., is the
				unit of measurement used to describe the numerical pH of a solution, fluid or
				pollutant.
(q) "Subsurface
				Discharge" means a discharge to a below-surface receiver.
(r) "Total Dissolved Solids," abbreviated
				TDS, is the sum of the dissolved mineral constituents in water, expressed as
				mg/L.
(s) "Toxic Materials
				(Substances)" are those materials (substances) or combinations of materials
				(substances), including disease-causing agents, that, after discharge and upon
				exposure, ingestion, inhalation or assimilation into any environmentally
				significant organism, either directly from the environment or indirectly by
				ingestion through food chains, may cause death, disease, behavioral
				abnormalities, cancer, genetic malfunctions, physiological malfunctions
				(including malfunctions in reproduction of offspring) or physical deformations
				in such organisms or their offspring; and includes all materials (substances)
				so designated as toxic by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the
				Federal Register for December 24, 1975 (Part IV), Water Programs, National
				Interim Primary Drinking Water Regulations.
(t) "Underground Water" means subsurface
				water that is any body of water under the surface of the earth, including water
				in the vadose zone and groundwater.
(u) "Vadose Zone" means the unsaturated zone
				in the earth, between the land surface and the top of the first saturated
				aquifer that is not a perched water aquifer. The vadose zone characteristically
				contains liquid water under less than atmospheric pressure, and water vapor and
				air or other gases at atmospheric pressure. Perched water bodies exist within
				the vadose zone.
(v) "Virtually
				Free" means a concentration less than the concentration that is the lower limit
				of detection.