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

¹ The can­tons shall en­sure that the costs of the con­struc­tion, op­er­a­tion, main­ten­ance, im­prove­ment and re­place­ment of waste wa­ter treat­ment plants that serve the pub­lic in­terest are passed on to the per­sons re­spons­ible for the pro­duc­tion of the waste wa­ter through fees or oth­er charges. In or­gan­ising the charges, the fol­low­ing factors in par­tic­u­lar shall be taken in­to ac­count:

a.

the nature and volume of the waste wa­ter pro­duced;

b.

the de­pre­ci­ation re­quired to pre­serve the value of the in­stall­a­tions;

c.

the in­terest;

d.

the planned in­vest­ment re­quire­ments for main­ten­ance, im­prove­ments and re­place­ments, for ad­apt­a­tion to stat­utory re­quire­ments and for op­er­a­tion­al op­tim­isa­tion.

² If im­pos­ing cost-cov­er­ing charges that com­ply with the pol­luter pays prin­ciple jeop­ard­ises the en­vir­on­ment­ally com­pat­ible dis­pos­al of waste wa­ter, dis­pos­al may be fin­anced dif­fer­ently to the ex­tent re­quired.

³ The per­sons re­spons­ible for the waste wa­ter treat­ment plants must form the re­quired fin­an­cial re­serves.

⁴ The prin­ciples for cal­cu­lat­ing the charges shall be made pub­lic.