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

¹Those re­spons­ible for waste wa­ter which does not meet the re­quire­ments laid down for dis­charge in­to the drain­age sys­tem must sub­ject such waste wa­ter to pre-treat­ment. Such pre-treat­ment shall be reg­u­lated by the can­tons.

²The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies shall de­cide on the ap­pro­pri­ate way to dis­pose of waste wa­ter which is not suited for treat­ment by a cent­ral wa­ter treat­ment plant.

³Non-pol­luted waste wa­ter with per­man­ent flow shall not be passed through a cent­ral waste wa­ter treat­ment plant either dir­ectly or in­dir­ectly. The can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies may au­thor­ise ex­cep­tions to this rule.

⁴In a farm com­pris­ing a sub­stan­tial stock of cattle or pigs, do­mest­ic waste wa­ter may be used ag­ri­cul­tur­ally to­geth­er with the li­quid ma­nure (Art. 14) provided that:

a.

res­id­en­tial or in­dus­tri­al build­ings and their ad­join­ing land are situ­ated in an area clas­si­fied as an ag­ri­cul­tur­al zone or the com­mun­al au­thor­ity is tak­ing the ne­ces­sary meas­ures, par­tic­u­larly in the field of area plan­ning, to clas­si­fy the build­ings and their ad­join­ing land in an ag­ri­cul­tur­al zone;

b.

stor­age ca­pa­city is suf­fi­cient for do­mest­ic waste wa­ter too and the waste wa­ter is used on land which is either owned or leased by the farm in ques­tion.

⁵If the res­id­en­tial or in­dus­tri­al build­ings and their ad­join­ing land in ac­cord­ance with Art. 4 are not al­loc­ated to an ag­ri­cul­tur­al zone with­in five years, do­mest­ic waste wa­ter must be dis­charged in­to the pub­lic sew­ers.