Water Quality Definition of Terms Flashcards
refers to the amount of contaminant load that can be discharged to a specific water body without exceeding the water quality guidelines.
Assimilative Capacity
includes, but is not limited to, the act of spilling, leaking, pumping, pouring, emitting, emptying, releasing, or dumping of any material into a water body or onto land from which it might flow or drain into said water.
Discharge
means discharges from known sources, which are passed into a body of water or land, or wastewater flowing out of a manufacturing plant, industrial plant including domestic, commercial, and recreational facilities.
Effluent
refers to a recognizable economic unit under a single ownership or control, i.e., under a single legal entity, which engages in one or predominantly one kind of economic activity at a single physical location. This includes industrial, commercial, and institutional establishments.
Establishment
means water containing less than 500 parts per million dissolved common salt, sodium chloride, such as that in groundwater, rivers, ponds, and lakes.
Freshwater
means any legal restriction or limitation on quantities, rates, and/or concentrations or any combination thereof, of physical, chemical, or biological parameters of effluent which a person or point source is allowed to discharge into a body of water or land; that is applicable to all industry categories and defined according to the classification of the receiving water body.
General Effluent Standards (GES)
is the nth root of the product of a series of n numbers. It is a calculation to determine an average when the set of numbers covers a wide range.
Geometric Mean
refers to subsurface water that occurs beneath a water table in soils and rocks, or in geological formations.
Groundwater
means the set of all production units engaged primarily in the same or similar kinds of productive economic activity.
Industry
refer to waters with salinity levels not less than 30 parts per thousand, at least 95 percent of the time.
Marine Waters
are values that should not be exceeded at any point in time.
Maximum Allowable Limit
refers to the amount of naturally occurring chemical substances derived/originating from natural processes in the environment.
Natural Background Concentration
means the waters of the Philippines, including the territorial sea and inland waters suitable for water transport.
Navigable Waters
means any identifiable source of pollution with specific point of discharge into a particular water body.
Point Source
refers to any substance, whether solid, liquid, gaseous, or radioactive, which directly or indirectly:
(i) alters the quality of any segment of the receiving water body so as to affect or tend to affect adversely any beneficial use thereof;
(ii) is hazardous or potentially hazardous to health;
(iii) imparts objectionable odor, temperature change, or physical, chemical or biological change to any segment of the water body; or
(iv) is in excess of the allowable limits or concentrations or quality standards specified, or in contravention of the condition, limitation, or restriction prescribed in RA 9275.
Pollutant
means water suitable (both health and acceptability considerations) for drinking and cooking purposes.
Potable Water
refers to any form of recreation, where there is intimate contact of the human body with water, such as swimming, water skiing, or skin diving.
Primary Contact Recreation
are the required minimum water quality parameters to be monitored for each water body.
Primary Parameters
refers to a watercourse or a water body, or any segment thereof, that is classified as a source of public water supply, harvesting of shellfish for direct human consumption, or that which is designated by competent a government authority or by legislation as a national marine park and reserve, including coral reef park and reserve.
Protected Water
refers to the water body into which surface water, wastewater, and effluent are discharged.
Receiving Water Body
are other water quality parameters that shall be used in baseline assessments as part of the Environmental Impact Assessment and other water quality monitoring purposes.
Secondary Parameters
means the Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
Secretary
are parameters specific to the processes of an establishment.
Significant Effluent Quality Parameters
refers to wastewater whose initial Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) value before treatment is equal to or greater than 3,000 milligrams per liter (mg/L).
Strong Wastewater
