Definitions

As used in these regulations, (a) "Commissioner" means the Commissioner of Environmental Protection. (b) "Calendar month water surface elevations" is a listing of the pond elevations at the first of each calendar month which have occurred or would result from historical flows, the available storage, and the current demand. (c) "Discharge device" means any gate, valve, pipe, spillway, tainter gate, flash-board, tailrace or similar means of conducting water from above an impoundment or diversion to the watercourse below. (d) "Diversion" means a structure which removes water from a watercourse, which does not return substantially all of the water so removed directly and promptly to such watercourse. Diversions shall include, but are not limited to, structures used for water supply, irrigation, industrial use, power production, and recreation. Diversions shall not include combined impoundment diversion structures which shall be classified instead as impoundments. (e) "Drainage area" means that portion of the watershed upstream from the subject structure which catches and conveys all runoff to the structure. (f) "Impoundment" means a dam, dike, reservoir, or other structure, constructed to seize and hold water by effectively blocking the flow of a watercourse. Impoundments shall include, but are not limited to, structures used for water supply, industrial use, power production and recreation. Impoundments shall not include small retaining walls constructed for the sole purpose of keeping diversion pipes or structures submerged or dry flood control dams, but shall include all other combined impoundment-diversion structures. (g) "Operator" means any person who, or the responsible administrative or executive officer of any organization which owns, operates, or proposes to construct any impoundment or diversion on a stocked river or stream system within the State. (h) "Release" means any discharge by means of a valve, gate, penstock, pipe, spillway, flashboard, turbine, or from leakage, seepage, condensation, precipitation on the structure, or from any source which becomes part of the flow downstream of the structure. (i) "Safe yield" means the maximum continuous supply which can be anticipated from the watershed with the available storage during a period of years in which occurs a year as dry as one in twenty. (j) "Stocked watercourse" means any watercourse and its tributaries into which the Commissioner or his agent shall have ordered or directed to be placed therein any species of trout, charr, salmon or their hybrid, or any other commercial or game fish, regardless of age or size. (k) "Water supply emergency" means a combination of climatological water demand, water quality, or structural problems which could cause a grave situation which these regulations could worsen or which their suspension could help alleviate.