The procedures prescribed herein shall, except as noted in § 136.5, be used to perform the measurements indicated whenever the waste constituent specified is required to be measured for:

(a) An application submitted to the Administrator, or to a State having an approved NPDES program for a permit under section 402 of the Clean Water Act of 1977, as amended (CWA), and/or to reports required to be submitted under NPDES permits or other requests for quantitative or qualitative effluent data under Parts 122 to 125 of Title 40, and,

(b) Reports required to be submitted by discharges under the NPDES established by Parts 124 and 125 of this chapter, and,

(c) Certifications issued by States pursuant to section 401 of the CWA, as amended.

[38 FR 28758, Oct. 16, 1973, as amended at 49 FR 43250, Oct. 26, 1984]

As used in this part, the term:

(a) "Act" means the Clean Water Act of 1977, Pub. L. 95-217, 91 Stat. 1566, et seq. (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.) (The Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972 as amended by the Clean Water Act of 1977).

(b) "Administrator" means the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

(c) "Regional Administrator" means one of the EPA Regional Administrators.

(d) "Director" means the Director of the State Agency authorized to carry out an approved National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Program under section 402 of the Act.

(e) "National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES)" means the national system for the issuance of permits under section 402 of the Act and includes any State or interstate program which has been approved by the Administrator, in whole or in part, pursuant to section 402 of the Act.

(f) "Detection limit” means the minimum concentration of an analyte (substance) that can be measured and reported with a 99% confidence that the analyte concentration is greater than zero as determined by the procedure set forth at Appendix B of this part.

[38 FR 28758, Oct. 16, 1973, as amended at 49 FR 43250, Oct. 26, 1984]

§ 136.3 Identification of test procedures.

(a) Parameters or pollutants, for which methods are approved, are listed together with test procedure descriptions and references in Tables IA, IB, IC, ID, and IE. The full text of the referenced test procedures are incorporated by reference into Tables IA, IB, IC, ID, and IE. The references and the sources from which they are available are given in paragraph (b) of this section. These test procedures are incorporated as they exist on the day of approval and a notice of any change in these test procedures will be published in the FEDERAL REGISTER. The discharge parameter values for which reports are required must be determined by one of the standard analytical test procedures incorporated by reference and described in Tables IA, IB, IC, ID, N and IE, or by any alternate test procedure which has been approved by the Administrator under the provisions of paragraph (d) of this section and §§ 136.4 and 136.5 of this Part 136.) Under certain circumstances (§ 136.3 (b) or (c) or 40 CFR 401.13) other test procedures may be used that may be more advantageous when such other test procedures have been previously approved by the Regional Administrator of the Region in which the discharge will occur, and providing the Director of the State in which such discharge will occur does not object to the use of such alternate test procedure.