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

¹The per­son re­spons­ible for a dam shall as far as pos­sible en­sure that in flush­ing or empty­ing an im­pound­ment or when in­spect­ing drain­age and flood over­flow struc­tures, down­stream fauna and flora are not harmed.

²Flush­ing and empty­ing shall take place only with the au­thor­isa­tion of the can­ton­al au­thor­ity. The li­cens­ing au­thor­ity shall con­sult in­ter­ested spe­cial­ist agen­cies. If peri­od­ic­al flush­ing and empty­ing are re­quired in or­der to main­tain op­er­a­tion­al safety, the au­thor­ity shall fix only the times and types of such op­er­a­tions.

³If a per­son re­spons­ible is ob­liged to lower the wa­ter level of a reser­voir on safety grounds as a res­ult of ex­cep­tion­al events, he shall im­me­di­ately in­form the re­spons­ible au­thor­ity.