Federal Act
on the Protection of Waters
(Waters Protection Act, WPA)

¹The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall carry out sur­veys with rel­ev­ance to Switzer­land as a whole in­to:

a.

the hy­dro­lo­gic­al bal­ance;

b.

the wa­ter qual­ity of sur­face and un­der­ground wa­ters;

c.

the sup­ply of drink­ing wa­ter;

d.

oth­er mat­ters con­cern­ing the pro­tec­tion of wa­ters.

²It may par­ti­cip­ate fin­an­cially in the de­vel­op­ment of in­stall­a­tions and pro­ced­ures to in­crease the state of tech­nic­al know­ledge in the gen­er­al in­terest of wa­ters pro­tec­tion, with par­tic­u­lar re­spect to meas­ures taken at the source.

³It shall make the res­ults and in­ter­pret­a­tion of sur­veys avail­able to in­ter­ested parties.

⁴The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the im­ple­ment­a­tion of sur­veys and their eval­u­ation.

⁵Fed­er­al agen­cies shall is­sue spe­cial­ised tech­nic­al in­struc­tions and shall provide ad­vice to mon­it­or­ing agen­cies. They may carry out hy­dro­lo­gic­al work against pay­ment for third parties or make their equip­ment avail­able for such work.