This standard describes vertically mounted, fabricated stainless-steel slide gates with full-aperture closure, designed for either seating head or unseating head or both, in ordinary water supply and wastewater service. The gates are primarily used to shut off or throttle water or wastewater flow through a rectangular or round orifice, end of channel, or in-channel opening. They may be of either conventional closure or flush-bottom closure type and may open upward or downward. This standard also describes manual gate actuator mechanisms together with standard accessories. Power-actuated mechanisms (including electric or hydraulic) are described in ANSI/AWWA C541 and ANSI/AWWA C542.

Major revisions made to the standard in this edition include the following:

1. A section on chlorine and chloramine degradation of elastomers was added to the foreword (Sec. II. A.).
2. The definition of constructor has been removed from the standard.
3. Requirements was extensively updated to read consistently among the four slide gate standards, except for where materially different (Sec. 4).
4. Tensile, compressive, and critical buckling loads were readdressed and clarified, along with the definitions for rated and extreme loads.