Among other things, the Act requires dischargers to obtain a NPDES permit to legally discharge pollutants into a waterbody.

To legally discharge pollutants directly into a waterbody, a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit must be obtained.

ICANN also needs to prove it can enforce the terms of these contracts and explain how it will legally discharge these obligations.

The environmental push, meanwhile, may refocus a spotlight on an issue that has dogged G.E. for years: whether it should be responsible for dredging the Hudson River to remove chemicals that it legally discharged some 30 years ago.

Cruise ships can legally discharge gray water anywhere and dump human waste and ground food more than three miles from shore.

In Mr. Vollmann's view, an opportunity to legally discharge a firearm is not something to pass up.

These permits typically specify the types and maximum amounts of pollutants a permit holder may legally discharge into the air or state waterways.

That is where the General Electric Company legally discharged about 600,000 pounds of the compounds from 1946 until 1975, when it stopped, at the urging of biologists.

To put the leak in perspective, officials say the two Indian Point operating reactors legally discharge into the Hudson every year an amount of tritium 18,000 times greater than what is now leaking.

The steelmaker legally discharged more than 29 million pounds of nitrate compounds - a waste produced when nitric acid is used to "pickle" or clean the surface of raw steel-into Connoquenessing Creek.