160.50 Groundwater coordinating council.
adopted under this chapter provide adequate safeguards for public health and welfare. However, this chapter does not prevent regulatory agencies from adopting regulations under regulatory authority elsewhere in the statutes based on the best currently available technology for regulated activities and practices which ensure a greater degree of groundwater protection. (6) Where necessary to comply with federal statutes or regulations, the department of natural resources may adopt rules in regulatory programs administered by it which are more stringent than the enforcement standards and preventive action limits adopted under this chapter. (7) A regulatory agency may take any actions within the context of regulatory programs established in statutes outside of this chapter, if those actions are necessary to protect public health and welfare or prevent a significant damaging effect on groundwater or surface water quality for present or future consumptive or nonconsumptive uses, whether or not an enforcement standard and preventive action limit for a substance has been adopted under this chapter. Nothing in this chapter requires the department of health services or the department of natural resources to establish an enforcement standard for a substance if a federal number or state drinking water standard has not been adopted for the substance and if there is not sufficient scientific information to establish the standard. (8) Preventive action limits shall serve as a means to inform regulatory agencies of potential groundwater contamination problems, to establish the level of groundwater contamination at which regulatory agencies are required to commence efforts to control the contamination and to provide a basis for design and management practice criteria in administrative rules. A preventive action limit is not intended to be an absolute standard at which remedial action is always required. History: 1983 a. 410; 1995 a. 27 s. 9126 (19); 2007 a. 20 s. 9121 (6) (a). Cross-reference: See also ch. NR 140, Wis. adm. code. The promulgation of rules that prescribe the use of risk-based methodologies to respond to petroleum contamination in soil and groundwater would violate ch. 160. OAG 3-99.