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

¹The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall spe­cify the wa­ter qual­ity re­quire­ments for sur­face and un­der­ground wa­ters.

²It shall en­act reg­u­la­tions on:

a.

the dis­charge of waste wa­ter in­to bod­ies of wa­ter;

b.

the in­filt­ra­tion of waste wa­ter;

c.

sub­stances which may ac­cord­ing to the meth­od of their use enter in­to wa­ter and which, by reas­on of their prop­er­ties or the quant­it­ies used, risk pol­lut­ing wa­ters or im­pair­ing the op­er­a­tion of waste wa­ter treat­ment plants.

³ An au­thor­isa­tion for plant pro­tec­tion products and biocid­al products (pesti­cides) must be re­viewed if:

a.

the lim­it value of 0.1 µg/l for pesti­cides or their de­grad­a­tion products is re­peatedly and widely ex­ceeded in wa­ters used or in­ten­ded for use for drink­ing wa­ter; or

b.

the eco­tox­ic­o­lo­gic­al lim­it val­ues for pesti­cides are re­peatedly and widely ex­ceeded in sur­face wa­ters.⁹

⁴ The new de­cision on au­thor­isa­tion must en­sure com­pli­ance with the lim­it val­ues.¹⁰

⁵ If it is not pos­sible to achieve com­pli­ance with the lim­it val­ues by im­pos­ing con­di­tions of use, the au­thor­isa­tion for the pesti­cides in ques­tion or, in the case of plant pro­tec­tion products, the ap­prov­al of their act­ive sub­stances must be with­drawn.¹¹

⁶ If a meas­ure un­der para­graph 5 would ser­i­ously re­duce do­mest­ic sup­plies of im­port­ant ag­ri­cul­tur­al crops, the Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­frain from with­draw­ing au­thor­isa­tion or ap­prov­al for a lim­ited peri­od of time.¹²