10.16.010 Definitions.
Unless the context specifically indicates otherwise, the meaning of terms used in this Chapter shall be as follows:
(1) “BOD” (denoting Biochemical Oxygen Demand) means the quantity of oxygen utilized in the biochemical oxidation of organic matter under standard laboratory procedure in five days at twenty degrees centigrade, expressed in milligrams per liter.
(2) “Building drain” means that part of the lowest horizontal piping of a drainage system which receives the discharge from soil, waste, and other drainage pipes inside the walls of the building and conveys it to the building sewer, beginning five feet outside the inner face of the building wall.
(3) “Building sewer” means the extension from the building drain to the public sewer or other place of disposal.
(4) “Director” means the director of public works of the city of Pullman, or his authorized deputy, agent, or representative.
(5) “Discharge-Industrial Discharger” shall mean any non-residential user who discharges an effluent into the municipal sewer system by gravity flow, pumping, tank trucks, and all constructed devices and appliances appurtenant thereto.
(6) “Garbage” means solid wastes from the domestic and commercial preparation, cooking and dispensing of food, and from the handling, storage, and sale of produce.
(7) “Industrial wastes” mean the liquid wastes from industrial manufacturing processes, trade, or business as distinct from sanitary sewage.
(8) “Municipal sewer system” shall mean the system of conduits, pumps, treatment plants, structures, and properties, including without limitation all properties, interests, physical, and intangible rights of every kind or nature owned or held by the city and all appurtenances thereto, however acquired, insofar as they relate to or concern drainage, transportation, storage or treatment, in any manner whatsoever, of waste matter or storm and surface water of any nature now or hereafter permitted by this Chapter to enter the municipal sewer system. Sanitary sewers and storm drains, separately and in combination, are, without limitation, included in the municipal sewer system.
(9) “Natural outlet” means any outlet into a watercourse, pond, ditch, lake, or other body of surface water or groundwater.
(10) “Person” means any individual, firm, company, association, society, corporation, or group.
(11) “pH” means the logarithm of the reciprocal of the weight of hydrogen ions in grams per liter of solution.
(12) “Properly shredded garbage” means the wastes from the preparation, cooking, and dispensing of food that have been shredded to such a degree that all particles will be carried freely under the flow conditions normally prevailing in public sewers, with no particle greater than one-half inch in any dimension.
(13) “Public sewer” means a sewer in which all owners of abutting properties have equal rights, and which is controlled by public authority.
(14) “Sanitary sewer” means a sewer which carries sewage and to which stormwater, surface water, and groundwater are not intentionally admitted.
(15) “Sewage” means a combination of the water-carried wastes from residences, business buildings, institutions, and industrial establishments, together with such groundwater, surface water, and stormwater as may be present.
(16) “Sewage treatment plant” means any arrangement of devices and structures used for treating sewage.
(17) “Sewage works” means all facilities for collecting, pumping, treating, and disposing of sewage.
(18) “Sewer” means pipe or conduit for carrying sewage.
(19) “Shall” is mandatory; “may” is permissive.
(20) “Significant Industrial Discharge” shall mean any industrial user of the city's wastewater disposal system who
(a) is subject to, or potentially subject to, national pretreatment standards promulgated under Section 307(b) or (c) of the Federal Clean Water Act (CWA);
(b) has in his wastes prohibited quantities of toxic pollutants as defined pursuant to Section 502 of the CWA;
(c) has a discharge flow of 25,000 gallons or more of process wastewater per average workday;
(d) has a flow greater than 5 percent of the flow in the city's wastewater treatment system; or
(e) is determined by the director to have significant impact or potential for significant impact, either singly or in combination with other contributing industries, on the wastewater treatment system, the quality of sludge, the systems effluent quality, or air emissions generated by the system.
(21) “Slug” means any discharge of water, sewage, or industrial waste which in concentration of any given constituent or in quantity of flow exceeds for any period of duration longer than fifteen minutes more than five times the average twenty-four-hour concentration or flows during normal operation.
(22) “Storm drain” or “storm sewer” means a sewer which carries stormwater and surface water and drainage, but excludes sewage and industrial wastes, other than unpolluted cooling water.
(23) “Suspended solids” means solids that either float on the surface of, or are in suspension in water, sewage, or other liquids, and which are removable by laboratory filtering.
(24) “Toxic Pollutant” shall mean 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 director, cause death, disease, behavioral abnormalities, cancer, genetic mutations, physiological malfunctions (including malfunctions in reproduction) or physical deformations, in such organisms or their offspring.
(25) “Watercourse” means a channel in which a flow of water occurs, either continuously or intermittently. (Ord. 87-29 §1, 1987; Ord. 80-12 §1, 1980).