Joint Groundwater Monitoring and ... - TCEQ e-Services

USER’S GUIDE
The remaining portion of the report is divided into two sections. The first section,
Groundwater Protection Program Descriptions, provides a narrative, programspecific
overview for each contributing agency or organization. The second section,
Groundwater Contamination Case Descriptions, contains a tabular listing of
individual contamination cases which were documented for calendar year 2009.
Appendices are included at the end of the report, providing more detailed information
supporting or supplementing the body of the report.
Groundwater Protection Program Descriptions. In this section, the specific
regulatory programs of each agency are described in terms of the activity or activities
regulated, the standards and approvals required, monitoring of regulated entities’
compliance with the conditions of approval, monitoring of groundwater to detect
problems, and actions required if groundwater contamination is discovered at a site or
facility.
The status of each program's required groundwater monitoring is described and
includes comments on quality assurance policies and procedures and the number of
facilities that are required to perform monitoring. The status of groundwater
contamination is described, and the information contained in the case description
table is summarized. Finally, special notes or comments specific to each program
may be included for additional clarification.
Groundwater Contamination Case Descriptions. This section contains the
individual groundwater contamination case descriptions for each contributing agency
with regulatory groundwater protection authority. Each agency’s table lists
contamination cases by county and contains several fields (columns) of data specific
to each case.
Rules and Definitions Related to Report Compilation
Texas Water Code, §26.406, authorized the TGPC to adopt rules defining the
conditions that constitute groundwater contamination for the purpose of inclusion of
cases in its annual monitoring and contamination report (Appendix 4). The TGPC
adopted rules (Title 31, Texas Administrative Code, §§601.1 through 601.5) on
March 5, 1991, defining certain terms and conditions that constitute groundwater
contamination for the purpose of the report. The TGPC adopted revised rules with
minor clarifying amendments on August 13, 1998, which became effective
September 13, 1998. The rules were amended to add Subchapter B - Notice of
Groundwater Contamination, 31 TAC §601.10, in response to passage of HB 3030
(78 th Legislature, 2003), TWC 26.408, effective November 12, 2003.
In the rules groundwater, groundwater contamination and enforcement action are
defined in broad terms so that the varying jurisdictional abilities and programs of the
contributing agencies could be compiled in similar formats and compared. Broad
definitions also enable the report to include the largest possible universe of
documented contamination from man-induced activities.
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