Pennsylvania Statutes Title 35 P.S. Health and Safety § 691.1. Definitions

The following words or phrases, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise, shall have the meanings ascribed to them in this section.

“Department” means the Department of Environmental Resources,  1 the Environmental Quality Board  2 or the Environmental Hearing Board carrying out the provisions of the act of April 9, 1929 (P.L. 177, No. 175), known as “The Administrative Code of 1929.”  3

“Establishment” shall be construed to include any industrial establishment, mill, factory, tannery, paper or pulp mill, garage, oil refinery, oil well, boat, vessel, mine, coal colliery, breaker, coal processing operations, dredging operations, except where the dredger holds an unexpired and valid permit issued by the Pennsylvania Water and Power Resources Board prior to the effective date of this act, quarry, and each and every other industry or plant or works.

“Industrial waste” shall be construed to mean any liquid, gaseous, radioactive, solid or other substance, not sewage, resulting from any manufacturing or industry, or from any establishment, as herein defined, and mine drainage, refuse, silt, coal mine solids, rock, debris, dirt and clay from coal mines, coal collieries, breakers or other coal processing operations. “Industrial waste” shall include all such substances whether or not generally characterized as waste.

“Institution” shall include healing, preventive, mental, health, educational, correctional and penal institutions, almshouses, and county and city homes operated by the State, or any political subdivision thereof, and whose sewage is not admitted to a public sewer system.

“Mine” shall be construed to mean any coal mine, clay mine or other facility from which minerals are extracted from the earth including coal refuse disposal areas and coal collieries, coal breakers and other coal processing operations.

“Municipality” shall be construed to include any county, city, borough, town, township, school district, institution, or any authority created by any one or more of the foregoing.

“Person” shall be construed to include any natural person, partnership, association or corporation or any agency, instrumentality or entity of Federal or State Government. Whenever used in any clause prescribing and imposing a penalty, or imposing a fine or imprisonment, or both, the term “person” shall not exclude the members of an association and the directors, officers or agents of a corporation.

“Pollution” shall be construed to mean contamination of any waters of the Commonwealth such as will create or is likely to create a nuisance or to render such waters harmful, detrimental or injurious to public health, safety or welfare, or to domestic, municipal, commercial, industrial, agricultural, recreational, or other legitimate beneficial uses, or to livestock, wild animals, birds, fish or other aquatic life, including but not limited to such contamination by alteration of the physical, chemical or biological properties of such waters, or change in temperature, taste, color or odor thereof, or the discharge of any liquid, gaseous, radioactive, solid or other substances into such waters. The department shall determine when a discharge constitutes pollution, as herein defined, and shall establish standards whereby and wherefrom it can be ascertained and determined whether any such discharge does or does not constitute pollution as herein defined.

“Sewage” shall be construed to include any substance that contains any of the waste products or excrementitious or other discharge from the bodies of human beings or animals.

“Sewer extension” shall be construed to include new pipelines or conduits and all other appurtenant constructions, devices and facilities except pumping stations and force mains added to an existing sewer system for the purpose of conveying sewage from individual structures or properties to the existing system.

“Waters of the Commonwealth” shall be construed to include any and all rivers, streams, creeks, rivulets, impoundments, ditches, water courses, storm sewers, lakes, dammed water, ponds, springs and all other bodies or channels of conveyance of surface and underground water, or parts thereof, whether natural or artificial, within or on the boundaries of this Commonwealth.