For the purpose of this chapter, the following definitions shall apply unless the context clearly indicates or requires a different meaning.
BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES. Activities, prohibitions, maintenance procedures, structural controls, local ordinances, and other management practices to prevent or reduce the discharge of pollutants.
CLEAN WATER ACT. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act, as codified at 33 U.S.C. 1251-1376.
COMMON PLAN OF DEVELOPMENT OR SALE. A construction activity that is completed in separate stages or phases or in combination with other construction activities. A common plan of development or sale is identified by plats, blueprints, marketing plans, contracts, building permit applications, a public notice or hearing, zoning requests, or other similar documentation.
CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITY (LARGE). Construction activities that result in land disturbance of five or more acres of land. Large construction activity also includes the disturbance of less than five acres of land area that is part of a common plan of development or sale that will ultimately disturb five or more acres of land.
CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITY (SMALL). Construction activities including clearing, grading, and excavating that result in land disturbance of one or more but less than five acres of land. Small construction activity also includes the disturbance of less than one acre of total land area that is part of a larger common plan of development or sale if the larger common plan will ultimately disturb one or more but less than five acres of land.
CONSTRUCTION SITE OPERATOR. The person or persons associated with a small or large construction project that is either:
(1) The person or persons that have operational control over construction plans and specifications including approval of revisions to the extent necessary to meet the requirements and conditions of state and federal law, including TPDES or NPDES permits allowing stormwater discharge; or
(2) The person or persons that have day-to-day operational control of those activities at a construction site that are necessary to ensure compliance with a stormwater pollution prevention plan for the site.
CONVEYANCE. Streets, curbs, gutters, man-made channels and ditches, drains, pipes, and other constructed features designed or used for drainage or flood control or to otherwise transport stormwater runoff.
DISCHARGE. The drainage, release, or disposal of pollutants in stormwater and certain non-stormwater from areas where land disturbing activities, construction materials, equipment storage or maintenance, or other industrial activities are located.
FINAL STABILIZATION. Where the following conditions are met:
(1) All soil disturbing activities have been completed and a uniform perennial vegetative cover with a density of 70% of the native background vegetative cover for the area has been established on all unpaved areas and areas not covered by permanent structures, or equivalent permanent stabilization measures (such as the use of riprap, gabions, or geotextiles) have been employed;
(2) For individual lots in a residential construction site either:
(a) The homebuilder completes final stabilization as specified in division (1) above; or
(b) The homebuilder establishes temporary stabilization for an individual lot prior to the time of transfer of the ownership of the home to the buyer and informs the homeowner of the need for, and benefits of, final stabilization; and
(3) For construction activities on land used for agricultural purposes (e.g. pipelines across crop or range land), final stabilization may be accomplished by returning the disturbed land to its preconstruction agricultural use. Areas disturbed that were not previously used for agricultural activities, such as buffer strips immediately adjacent to a surface water and areas which are not being returned to their preconstruction agricultural use must meet the final stabilization conditions of division (1) above.
GROUND WATER INFILTRATION. Groundwater that enters the MS4 (including storm sewer service connections and foundation drains) through such means as defective pipes, pipe joints, connections, or manholes.
ILLICIT CONNECTION. Any human-made conveyance connecting an illicit discharge directly to the MS4.
ILLICIT DISCHARGE. Any discharge to the MS4 that is not entirely composed of stormwater, except discharges allowed pursuant to state or federal law, including TPDES or NPDES permits allowing stormwater discharge or a separate authorization.
INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITIES. Manufacturing, processing, material storage and disposal areas, and similar areas where stormwater can contact industrial pollutants related to the industrial activity at an industrial facility described by the TPDES Multi-Sector General Permit, TXR 050000, as it may be amended, or by another TPDES or NPDES permit.
LAND DISTURBANCE (OR SOIL DISTURBANCE). Any activity which involves the physical movement or disturbance of earth material by mechanized means. This includes excavating, filling, stockpiling, clearance of vegetation, grading, compaction of soil, creation of borrow pits, or combination thereof. LAND DISTURBANCE does not include plowing, seeding, planting, cultivating, or harvesting on a farm, including lands that have been lying fallow as part of a conventional rotational cycle. LAND DISTURBANCE does not include routine maintenance performed to maintain the original line and grade, hydraulic capacity and purpose of a ditch, channel or other similar storm water conveyance. LAND DISTURBANCE does not include routine grading of existing dirt roads, asphalt overlays of existing roads, routine clearing of existing right-of-ways or other similar maintenance activities.
MAXIMUM EXTENT PRACTICABLE. The technology-based discharge standard for MS4s to reduce pollutants in stormwater discharges established by the Clean Water Act.
MUNICIPAL SEPARATE STORM SEWER SYSTEM (MS4). The conveyance or system of conveyances including roads, streets, catch basins, curbs, gutters, ditches, man-made channels, or storm drains that are owned or operated by the City of Palmview, the Palmview Irrigation District, Cameron County or the Texas Department of Transportation and that are designed or used for collecting or conveying stormwater; but which are not a combined sewer (sanitary sewer and stormwater) and are not part of the city's sanitary sewer collection system.
MS4 OPERATOR. For the purpose of this chapter, the City of Palmview.
NPDES. National Pollution Discharge Elimination System.
POINT SOURCE. Any discernible, confirmed, and discrete conveyance, including but not limited to, any pipe, ditch, channel, tunnel, conduit, well, discrete fissure, container, rolling stock, concentrated animal feeding operation, landfill leachate collection system, vessel or other floating craft from which pollutants are or may be discharged. This term does not include return flows from irrigated agriculture or agricultural stormwater runoff.
POLLUTANTS OF CONCERN. Those pollutants identified as a cause of impairment of the Arroyo Colorado and including biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), and sediment or parameters that address sediment such as total suspended solids, turbidity or siltation.
RELEASE. Any spilling, leaking, pumping, pouring, emitting, emptying, discharging, injecting, escaping, leaching, dumping, or disposing into groundwater, subsurface soils, surface soils, the MS4, the surface water of the state, or the waters of the United States.
SITE DEVELOPMENT PERMIT. A permit issued by the city for the alteration of the ground for the construction or installation of utilities, streets, sidewalks, structures designed to control erosion and run-off and other grading activities that are not a part of a project that requires a building permit.
STORMWATER MANAGEMENT PROGRAM (SWMP). A comprehensive program to manage the quality of discharges into and from Palmview's MS4.
STORMWATER RUNOFF. Rainfall runoff, snow melt runoff, and surface runoff and drainage.
STRUCTURAL CONTROLS. A pollution prevention practice that requires the construction or use of a device to capture or prevent pollution in stormwater runoff. Structural controls and practices may include but are not limited to: wet ponds, bio-retention, infiltration basins, stormwater wetlands, silt fences, earthen dikes, drainage swales, vegetative lined ditches, vegetative filter strips, sediment traps, check dams, subsurface drains, storm drain inlet protection, rock outlet protection, reinforced soil retaining systems, gabions, and temporary or permanent sediment basins.
SURFACE WATER IN THE STATE. Lakes, bays, ponds, impounding reservoirs, springs, rivers, streams, creeks, estuaries, wetlands, marshes, inlets, canals, the Gulf of Mexico from the mean high water level out 10.36 miles into the Gulf, and all other bodies of surface water, natural or artificial, inland or coastal, fresh or salt, navigable or non-navigable, and including the beds and banks of all water-courses and bodies of surface water, that are wholly or partially inside or bordering the state or subject to the jurisdiction of the state; except that waters in treatment systems which are authorized by state or federal law or permit, and which are created for the purpose of waste treatment are not considered to be water in the state.
TPDES. Texas Pollution Discharge Elimination System.
WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES.
(1) All waters which are currently used, were used in the past, or may be susceptible to use in interstate or foreign commerce, including all waters which are subject to the ebb and flow of the tide;
(2) All interstate waters, including interstate wetlands;
(3) All other waters such as intrastate lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, or natural ponds that the use, degradation, or destruction of which would affect or could affect interstate or foreign commerce including any such waters:
(a) Which are or could be used by interstate or foreign travelers for recreational or other purposes;
(b) From which fish or shellfish are or could be taken and sold in interstate or foreign commerce; or
(c) Which are used or could be used for industrial purposes by industries and interstate commerce;
(4) All impoundments of waters otherwise defined as waters of the U.S.;
(5) Tributaries of waters identified in divisions (1) through (4) of this definition;
(6) The territorial sea;
(7) Wetlands adjacent to waters (other than waters that are themselves wetlands) identified in divisions (1) through (6); and
(8) Waste treatment systems, including man-made treatment ponds, lagoons or wetlands designed to meet the requirements of CWA, are not waters of the United States.
WETLAND. An area that is inundated or saturated by surface or groundwater at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances does support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions. WETLANDS generally include swamps, marshes, bogs, and similar areas.
(Ord. 2020-02-O, passed 2-4-2020)