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

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion shall, with­in the lim­its of the ap­proved cred­its and on the basis of pro­gramme agree­ments, make com­pens­at­ory pay­ments to the can­tons in the form of glob­al con­tri­bu­tions to the plan­ning and im­ple­ment­a­tion of meas­ures for the re­hab­il­it­a­tion of wa­ters.

² In the case of es­pe­cially com­plex pro­jects, the can­tons may re­ceive the com­pens­at­ory pay­ments on a case-by-case basis.

³ The amount of the com­pens­at­ory pay­ments is de­term­ined by the rel­ev­ance of the meas­ures for the re-es­tab­lish­ment of the nat­ur­al func­tions of the wa­ters and by the ef­fect­ive­ness of the meas­ures.

^3bis In re­hab­il­it­a­tion pro­jects, the de­vel­op­ment of sec­tions of space provided for wa­ters in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 37 para­graph 3 must be fin­anced from the pro­ject budget dur­ing the first five years.⁶⁴

⁴ No con­tri­bu­tions shall be paid for the dis­mant­ling of an in­stall­a­tion if the per­son re­spons­ible for it is ob­liged to dis­mantle it.

⁵ The man­agers of the space provided for wa­ters shall re­ceive com­pens­at­ory pay­ments in ac­cord­ance with the Ag­ri­cul­ture Act of 29 April 1998⁶⁵ for the ex­tens­ive use of their lands. The ag­ri­cul­ture budget as well as the re­lated spend­ing ceil­ings shall be in­creased for this pur­pose.