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

¹In cases where a wa­ter­course is sub­stan­tially af­fected by wa­ter with­draw­als, it shall be re­medi­ated be­low the point of with­draw­al ac­cord­ing to the in­struc­tions of the au­thor­it­ies in so far as is pos­sible without in­fringing ex­ist­ing wa­ter use rights to the ex­tent of jus­ti­fy­ing a claim for com­pens­a­tion by the user.

²The au­thor­it­ies shall or­der more ex­tens­ive re­medi­ation meas­ures in cases which con­cern wa­ter­courses situ­ated in land­scapes or in­clud­ing hab­it­ats which are lis­ted in na­tion­al or can­ton­al in­vent­or­ies, or in cases where over­rid­ing pub­lic in­terests re­quire it. The pro­ced­ures for as­cer­tain­ing wheth­er com­pens­a­tion must be paid and for fix­ing their amount shall be based on the pro­ced­ures con­tained in the Com­puls­ory Pur­chase Act of 20 June 1930⁹³.

³ If small hy­dro-elec­tric power plants or oth­er in­stall­a­tions on wa­ters of his­tor­ic value are af­fected by the or­der for more ex­tens­ive re­medi­ation meas­ures in areas lis­ted in in­vent­or­ies in terms of para­graph 2, the au­thor­ity shall weigh up the in­terests of the pro­tec­tion of cul­tur­al her­it­age versus that of the lis­ted areas.⁹⁴