Every person who imports or manufactures cement in Puerto Rico shall meet the following requirements:
(a) Every thirty (30) days, the manufacturers shall file the results of the physical or chemical analyses performed to the cement within said period. These results shall be reported directly to the Department with a copy to the manufacturer.
(b) The samples of the analyses mentioned in the preceding subsection (a) if this section shall be taken as established in the ATSM Standards Manual in its Section C-183.
(c) Every importer or manufacturer shall inform the Department, in writing or through electronic means accepted by it, the arrival of all shipments of any type of cement in Puerto Rico at least five (5) working days prior to the arrival of the shipment. Upon its arrival, an officer of the Department may appear at the dock and take samples of the cement from each drum of cement, according to the provisions of the ATSM Standards Manual of the [sic] in its specification C-183, in the volume needed for the total number of samples required by this section. This notice shall be made to the Environmental Quality Board in order for it to verify whether the cargo complies with the Atmospheric Pollution Control Regulations, as amended. The Board shall be present in at least fifty percent (50%) of the shipments based on the total number of shipments of the year preceding the current year.
(d) Said samples shall be divided into six (6) parts, three (3) of which shall be retained by the importer to perform the corresponding analyses or tests. The fourth part shall be remitted by the Department to an independent laboratory and the fifth and sixth part shall be retained by the Department, in the case it should be necessary to perform additional analysis. The results of these analyses shall be delivered directly to the Department, with a copy to the importer.
(e) Every person who manufactures or imports cement of any type into Puerto Rico shall file a certificate of compliance at the Office of the Deputy Secretary of Supervision of the Department to evidence the cement quality requirements in accordance to the physical and chemical analyses established in § 167a of this title. The laboratory that conducts said analyses to determine compliance shall be duly inspected by the NIST or accredited by any of the signers of the Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) of NACLA.
The certificate of compliance of the importers shall be filed within a term of fifteen (15) days counting from the receipt of every shipment, with the exception of that of compression to be filed within twenty-eight (28) days, which result shall be filed within thirty (30) days following the receipt of the shipment. This document shall certify that the cement meets the requirements established in the statement of purpose note in § 167 of this title. The certificate of compliance of cement manufacturers shall be filed every [thirty] (30) days indicating the results of the chemical and physical analyses performed on the cement during said period.
(f) Any analysis that shows noncompliance with the quality requirements herein established shall be repeated once using the methods in Section 10 of specification C-183 of the ASTM Standards Manual in effect, on noncompliance and repetition of tests. In that case, the only results that shall be used are those obtained in the arbitration method. The retesting shall consist of the same number of determinations required for the initial analysis. When two (2) or more determinations are required, the value reported shall be the average of all the results that are within the precision limits of the method, with [ninety-five percent] (95%) reliability, as recommended in the specifications, or generally accepted.
(g) The importer manufacturer, as the case may be, shall pay the costs of the abovementioned physical or chemical analyses.
History —Sept. 17, 2001, No. 132, § 7, eff. 60 days after Sept. 17, 2001.