Discharge/Spill Requirements

• Discharges must be sampled within 30 minutes of the start of the discharge or as soon afterward as is safe.

Emergency Discharge Sampling Kit

Emergency Discharge Sampling Procedure

• All discharges and spills must be reported verbally to EPA (415) 972-3505 within 24 hours. Within 5 days, a written report must be submitted.
  
  
• Reporting requirements are found in the permit (107 K PDF), or you can use the compliance assistance worksheets (Reporting Discharges, Reporting Spills).
  
  
• In the case of a discharge, the operator must know how much rainfall occurred within a set period of time. Therefore, each operator is strongly encouraged to have a rain meter on site. Other options for determining rainfall are:
  • The National Weather Service (http://www.nws.noaa.gov/)
  • The Arizona Meteorological Network (AZMET) (http://ag.arizona.edu/azmet/)
    
    
• It is important to understand what the terms discharge and spill mean.
  
  
• The state has approved several laboratories to which the samples can be taken for analysis.

Page updated 7/02

Arizona
Dept. of
Agriculture