“Adjacent” means bordering, contiguous, or neighboring.

“Artificial wetland” means any wetlands created by humans from nonwetland sites, including, but not limited to, irrigation and drainage ditches, grass-lined swales, canals, detention facilities, wastewater treatment facilities, farm ponds, and landscape amenities, or that were unintentionally created as a result of the construction of a road, street, or highway.

“Buffer” means an upland or riparian area that protects or maintains: (1) habitat for aquatic, semi-aquatic, and terrestrial plants and animals, or (2) aquatic resource functions associated with wetlands, rivers, streams, ponds, groundwater, and lake systems from land disturbing activities on adjacent lands, such as removing sediments and associated pollutants from surface water runoff, removing, detaining, or detoxifying nutrients and contaminants from upland sources, and providing organic matter to wetlands.

“Clean Water Act” means the federal law of that name, codified as amended at 33 U.S.C. Section 1251 and thereafter.

“Compensatory mitigation” means the establishment, enhancement, preservation, reestablishment, rehabilitation, or restoration of wetlands, streams and aquatic resources for the purposes of compensating for unavoidable adverse impacts which remain after all practicable avoidance and minimization has been achieved.

“Corps” means the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“CWA Section 404(b)(1) Guidelines” means federal guidelines promulgated pursuant to Section 404(b)(1) of the Clean Water Act for specification of disposal sites for dredged or fill material (currently codified at 40 C.F.R. Part 230).

“Discharge of fill material” means the addition of fill material into wetlands or waters of the Reservation. The term includes without limitation the following activities: placement of fill that is necessary for the construction of any structure or infrastructure in a wetland or water of the Reservation; the building of any structure, infrastructure, or impoundment requiring rock, sand, dirt, or other material for its construction; site-development fills for recreational, industrial, commercial, residential, or other uses; causeways or road fills; dams and dikes; artificial islands; property protection and/or reclamation devices such as riprap, groins, seawalls, breakwaters, and revetments; beach nourishment; levees; fill for structures such as sewage treatment facilities, intake and outfall pipes associated with power plants and underwater utility lines; placement of fill material for construction or maintenance of any liner, berm, or other infrastructure associated with solid waste landfills; placement of overburden, slurry, or tailings or similar mining-related materials; artificial reefs; construction or maintenance of agricultural, drainage, or irrigation ditches or ponds; and plowing, cultivating, seeding, and harvesting to produce food, fiber, or forest products. The term does not include livestock grazing that does not otherwise come within the above definition.

“Dredged material” means material that is excavated or dredged from waters of the Reservation or elsewhere.

“EPA” means the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or their designated representative.

“Fill material” means material placed in wetlands or waters of the Reservation that has the effect of changing the bottom elevation of any portion of a wetland or waters of the Reservation or replacing any portion of a water of the Reservation with dry land. Examples of such fill material include without limitation the following: cement, clay, concrete, debris, garbage, pilings, plastics, rock, rubbish, sand, soil, spoils, trash, waste, wood chips, overburden from mining or other excavation activities, and materials used to create any structure or infrastructure in waters of the Reservation.

“Land disturbing activities” means any human-made or caused land alterations, disturbances, or construction activities, including but not limited to clearing, grubbing, excavating, draining, and discharge of dredged or fill matter that results in a change to existing topography, drainage patterns, rates of soil erosion, or hydrologic conditions.

“Person” means any individual, association, corporation, firm, partnership, joint venture, social club, estate, trust, government, political subdivision, agency, or any other group, entity, or combination acting as a unit.

“Practicable” means available and capable of being done after taking into consideration cost, existing technology, and logistics in light of overall project purposes.

“Reservation” means the area within the exterior boundaries of the Yurok Indian Reservation and all lands held by the United States in trust for the Tribe.

“Tribe” means the Yurok Tribe, unless the context indicates otherwise.

“Waters of the Reservation” means any surface or underground water or any wetlands within any part of the Reservation.

“Wetlands” means areas that are inundated or saturated by surface water or groundwater at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions, including without limitation bogs, fens, marshes, riparian areas, seeps, swamps, wet meadows, and similar areas, even when temporarily dry, but not including artificial wetlands except those intentionally created from nonwetland areas to mitigate impacts to or the conversion of wetlands.

“YTEP” means the Yurok Tribe Environmental Program. [Ord. 67 § 5009, adopted, 5/21/2020.]