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

In this Act:

a.

sur­face wa­ters: means wa­ter bod­ies and their beds in­clud­ing the bot­toms and banks, to­geth­er with the fauna and flora liv­ing there;

b.

un­der­ground wa­ters: means ground­wa­ter (in­clud­ing spring wa­ter), aquifer, lower and up­per con­fin­ing beds;

c.

det­ri­ment­al ef­fects: means pol­lu­tion and any oth­er in­ter­ven­tion which harms the char­ac­ter or func­tion of wa­ter;

d.

pol­lu­tion: means any det­ri­ment­al phys­ic­al, chem­ic­al or bio­lo­gic­al change in the nature of wa­ter;

e.

waste wa­ter:means wa­ter which has been altered by do­mest­ic, in­dus­tri­al, com­mer­cial, ag­ri­cul­tur­al or oth­er uses, as well as that which flows with such wa­ter in sew­ers, and pre­cip­it­a­tion wa­ter flow­ing off built-up or sealed area;

f.

pol­luted waste wa­ter:means waste wa­ter which may pol­lute wa­ters in­to which it flows;

g.

farm ma­nure: means li­quid ma­nure, stable ma­nure stem­ming from an­im­al hus­bandry as well as li­quids emit­ted by fod­der silo;

h.

flow rate Q₃₄₇:means the flow rate which, av­er­aged over ten years, is reached or ex­ceeded on an av­er­age of 347 days per year and which is not sub­stan­tially af­fected by dam­ming, with­draw­al or sup­ply of wate;

i.

per­man­ent flow:means a flow rate Q₃₄₇ which is great­er than zero;

k.

re­sid­ual flow:means the flow rate of a wa­ter­course which re­mains after one or sev­er­al with­draw­als of wa­ter;

l.

re­quired wa­ter en­dow­ment:means the amount of wa­ter re­quired to en­sure the main­ten­ance of a par­tic­u­lar re­sid­ual flow after with­draw­al of wa­ter;

m.⁵

re­hab­il­it­a­tion:means the re-es­tab­lish­ment by means of civil en­gin­eer­ing of the nat­ur­al func­tions of chan­nelled, straightened, covered or cul­ver­ted sur­face wa­ters.