Wisconsin Statutes Environmental Regulation (Ch. 280 to 299) § 283.01. Definitions

(1) “Biological monitoring” means the determination of the effects on aquatic life, including accumulation of pollutants in tissue, in receiving waters due to the discharge of pollutants by techniques and procedures, including sampling of organisms representative of appropriate levels of the food chain appropriate to the volume and the physical, chemical and biological characteristic of the effluent and at appropriate frequencies and locations.

(2) “Construction” means any placement, assembly or installation of facilities or equipment, including contractual obligations to purchase such facilities or equipment, at the premises where such equipment will be used, including preparation work at such premises.

(3) “Department” means the department of natural resources.

(4) “Discharge” when used without qualification includes a discharge of any pollutant.

(5) “Discharge of pollutant” or “discharge of pollutants” means any addition of any pollutant to the waters of this state from any point source.

(6) “Effluent limitation” means any restriction established by the department, including schedules of compliance, on quantities, rates, and concentrations of chemical, physical, biological, and other constituents which are discharged from point sources into waters of this state.

(6m) “Environmental pollution” means the contaminating or rendering unclean or impure the air, land or waters of the state, or making the same injurious to public health, harmful for commercial or recreational use, or deleterious to fish, bird, animal or plant life.

(7) “Municipality” means any city, town, village, county, county utility district, town sanitary district, town utility district, school district or metropolitan sewage district or any other public entity created pursuant to law and having authority to collect, treat or dispose of sewage, industrial wastes or other wastes.

(9) “Owner or operator” means any person owning or operating a point source of pollution.

(10) “Permit” means a permit for the discharge of pollutants issued by the department under this chapter.

(11) “Person” means an individual, owner, operator, corporation, limited liability company, partnership, association, municipality, interstate agency, state agency or federal agency.

(12) “Point source” means either of the following:

(13) “Pollutant” means any dredged spoil, solid waste, incinerator residue, sewage, garbage, refuse, oil, sewage sludge, munitions, chemical wastes, biological materials, radioactive substance, heat, wrecked or discarded equipment, rock, sand, cellar dirt and industrial, municipal and agricultural waste discharged into water.

(14) “Pollution” means man-made or man-induced alteration of the chemical, physical, biological or radiological integrity of water.

(15) “Schedule of compliance” means a schedule of remedial measures including an enforceable sequence of actions or operations leading to compliance with an effluent limitation or other limitation, prohibition or standard.

(16) “Secretary” means the secretary of natural resources or his or her designee.

(17) “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 department, cause death, disease, behavioral abnormalities, cancer, genetic mutations, physiological malfunctions, including malfunctions in reproduction or physical deformations, in such organisms or their offspring.

(18) “Treatment work” means any devices and systems used in the storage, treatment, recycling, and reclamation of municipal sewage or industrial waste of a liquid nature or necessary to recycle or reuse water at the most economical cost over the estimated life of the work, including intercepting sewers, outfall sewers, sewage collection systems, cooling towers and ponds, pumping, power and other equipment, and their appurtenances; extensions, improvements, remodeling, additions, and alterations thereof; elements essential to provide a reliable recycled supply such as standby treatment units and clear well facilities; and any works, including site acquisition of the land that will be an integral part of the treatment process or is used for ultimate disposal of residues resulting from such treatment. Additionally, “treatment work” means any other method or system for preventing, abating, reducing, storing, treating, separating or disposing of municipal waste, including storm water runoff, or industrial waste, including waste in combined storm water and sanitary sewer systems.

(19) “Vessel” means any watercraft or other artificial contrivance used or capable of being used as a means of transportation on water.

(20) “Waters of the state” means those portions of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior within the boundaries of Wisconsin, all lakes, bays, rivers, streams, springs, ponds, wells, impounding reservoirs, marshes, water courses, drainage systems and other surface water or groundwater, natural or artificial, public or private within the state or under its jurisdiction, except those waters which are entirely confined and retained completely upon the property of a person.