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

¹ Sur­face wa­ters may only be chan­nelled or straightened if:

a.

it is ne­ces­sary for flood pro­tec­tion (Art. 3 paras 1−3 of the Hy­draul­ic En­gin­eer­ing Act of 21 June 1991³²);

b.

it is ne­ces­sary for the pro­vi­sion of a nav­ig­able pas­sage or for the use of hy­dro­power that is in the pub­lic in­terest;

c.

it is ne­ces­sary for the con­struc­tion of a land­fill that can only be con­struc­ted at the planned loc­a­tion and in which only un­pol­luted ex­cav­a­tion ma­ter­i­al or spoil is de­pos­ited; or

d.

the con­di­tion of an already chan­nelled or straightened body of sur­face wa­ter can be im­proved in terms of this Act.

² In the event of op­er­a­tions on sur­face wa­ters, the nat­ur­al course of the body of wa­ter must as far as pos­sible be pre­served or re­stored.

³ Sur­face wa­ters and the space provided for wa­ters must be de­veloped and main­tained in such a man­ner that:

a.

they provide a hab­it­at for di­ver­si­fied fauna and flora;

b.

the in­ter­ac­tions between sur­face and un­der­ground wa­ters are main­tained to the greatest ex­tent pos­sible;

c.

ve­get­a­tion suited to the loc­a­tion may grow on the banks.

⁴ In built-up areas, the au­thor­it­ies may per­mit ex­cep­tions to para­graphs 2 and 3.

⁵ Para­graphs 2 and 3 also ap­ply by ana­logy to the cre­ation of ar­ti­fi­cial wa­ters, and to the re­pair and re­in­force­ment of ex­ist­ing pro­tect­ive struc­tures fol­low­ing dam­aging events.