joint groundwater report - Texas Commission on Environmental ...

USER’S GUIDEThe remaining portion of the <strong>report</strong> is divided into two sections. The first section, Groundwater ProtectionProgram Descriptions, provides a narrative, program-specific overview for each contributing agency ororganization. The second section, Groundwater Contamination Case Descriptions, contains a tabular listingof individual contamination cases which were documented or under enforcement for calendar year 1997.Appendices are included at the end of the <strong>report</strong>, providing more detailed information supporting orsupplementing the main body of the <strong>report</strong>.Groundwater Protection Program Descriptions. In this section, the specific regulatory programs of eachagency are described in terms of the activity or activities regulated, the standards and approvals required,monitoring of the regulated entity's compliance with the conditions of approval, monitoring of <strong>groundwater</strong> todetect problems, and actions required if <strong>groundwater</strong> contamination is discovered at a site or facility.The status of each program's required <strong>groundwater</strong> monitoring is described and includes comments on qualityassurance policies and procedures and the number of facilities that are required to perform monitoring. Thestatus of <strong>groundwater</strong> contamination is described, and the information contained in the case description tablefor each agency is summarized. Finally, special notes or comments specific to each program may be includedfor additional clarification.Groundwater Contamination Case Descriptions. This section contains the individual <strong>groundwater</strong>contamination case descriptions for each contributing agency with regulatory <strong>groundwater</strong> protectionauthority. Each agency’s table lists contamination cases by county and contains eight fields (columns) of dataspecific to each case.Rules and Definitions Related to ReportCompilation<strong>Texas</strong> Water Code, §26.406, authorized the TGPC to adopt rules defining the conditions that constitute<strong>groundwater</strong> contamination for the purpose of inclusion of cases in its annual monitoring and contamination<strong>report</strong> (Appendix 4). The TGPC adopted rules (Title 31, <strong>Texas</strong> Administrative Code, §§601.1 through601.5) on March 5, 1991, defining certain terms and conditions that constitute <strong>groundwater</strong> contaminationfor the purpose of the <strong>report</strong>. The TGPC rules became effective on March 29, 1991, adopted without changesfrom the proposed rules (published in the January 22, 1991 <strong>Texas</strong> Register).It was necessary to define <strong>groundwater</strong>, <strong>groundwater</strong> contamination and enforcement action in broad terms sothat the varying jurisdictional abilities and programs of the contributing agencies could be compiled in similarformats and compared. Broad definitions also enable the <strong>report</strong> to include the largest possible universe ofdocumented contamination from man-induced activities.< Groundwater is defined as water existing below the land surface in a zone of saturation, that is, the waterwhich completely fills the interconnected pore spaces of the rock or sediment.23