Federal Act
on Water Retaining Facilities
(Water Retaining Facilities Act, WRFA)

¹ The op­er­at­or must en­sure that:

a.

the safety of the pop­u­la­tion and en­vir­on­ment is guar­an­teed;

b.

the out­let and re­lief works are ad­equate and func­tion­al.

² The op­er­at­or shall carry out all in­spec­tions, meas­ure­ments and tests that are re­quired to as­sess the con­di­tion and be­ha­viour of the wa­ter re­tain­ing fa­cil­ity, and shall have the res­ults eval­u­ated without delay. The op­er­at­or shall sub­mit all cor­res­pond­ing re­ports to the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity.

³ The op­er­at­or must:

a.

main­tain the wa­ter re­tain­ing fa­cil­ity prop­erly, re­pair dam­age and rec­ti­fy safety de­fects without delay;

b.

ret­ro­fit or modi­fy the fa­cil­ity if the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity re­quires such ac­tion in or­der to rec­ti­fy safety de­fects;

c.

per­mit the in­stall­a­tion and use of na­tion­al mon­it­or­ing and meas­ure­ment sys­tems, and grant in­spec­tion bod­ies ac­cess to such sys­tems.

⁴ The su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity shall eval­u­ate the re­ports and veri­fy wheth­er the tech­nic­al safety re­quire­ments have been com­plied with. It shall also carry out peri­od­ic­al in­spec­tions of the fa­cil­ity.

⁵ If deemed ne­ces­sary for en­sur­ing the tech­nic­al safety of the fa­cil­ity, the su­per­vis­ory au­thor­ity shall spe­cify con­di­tions for the con­tin­ued op­er­a­tion of the fa­cil­ity.

⁶ Wa­ter re­tain­ing fa­cil­it­ies must be mon­itored and main­tained un­til such time as they are no longer able to re­tain or con­fine wa­ter, mud and oth­er ma­ter­i­als. If there is no op­er­at­or, the own­er of the land shall be re­spons­ible for these ob­lig­a­tions.