Waters Protection Ordinance
(WPO)

¹ The can­tons shall en­force this Or­din­ance un­less it del­eg­ates en­force­ment to the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

² If the fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies ap­ply oth­er fed­er­al laws, or in­ter­na­tion­al treat­ies or de­cisions that re­late to the sub­ject mat­ter of this Or­din­ance, they shall also en­force this Or­din­ance. The co­oper­a­tion of the FOEN and the can­ton­al au­thor­it­ies is gov­erned by Art­icle 48 para­graph 1 WPA; stat­utory du­ties of secrecy are re­served.

³ At the re­quest of the can­tons, the fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies shall take ac­count of their pro­vi­sions and meas­ures, un­less ful­fil­ment of the tasks of the fed­er­al au­thor­ity is thereby rendered im­possible or made dis­pro­por­tion­ately dif­fi­cult.

⁴ If the fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies en­act ad­min­is­trat­ive or­din­ances such as guidelines or in­struc­tions that con­cern wa­ters pro­tec­tion, they shall con­sult the FOEN.

⁵ The Fed­er­al De­part­ment of the En­vir­on­ment, Trans­port, En­ergy and Com­mu­nic­a­tions (the De­part­ment) may, if re­quired, amend the lists of para­met­ers and the nu­mer­ic­al re­quire­ments for wa­ter qual­ity in ac­cord­ance with An­nex 2 num­ber 11 para­graph 3, num­ber 12 para­graph 5 and num­ber 22 para­graph 2.⁷⁴