Federal Act
on the Protection of the Environment
(Environmental Protection Act, EPA)

¹ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may re­quire that a charge be paid to the Con­fed­er­a­tion:

a.

by the op­er­at­or of a land­fill on the de­pos­it of waste in the land­fill;

b.

by any per­son who ex­ports waste for de­pos­it in a land­fill, on the ex­port of waste.

^1bis In the case of land­fills in which only non-con­tam­in­ated waste is de­pos­ited, a charge may only be re­quired if it is ne­ces­sary in or­der to fund the re­cov­ery of such waste.⁵⁴

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil de­term­ines the rates of the charge, tak­ing spe­cial ac­count of the ex­pec­ted costs and the vari­ous types of land­fill. The max­im­um rates of the charge are as fol­lows:

a.

for waste de­pos­ited in Switzer­land:

1.

in the case of land­fills for non-con­tam­in­ated or lightly con­tam­in­ated waste: CHF 8/t,

2.

in the case of oth­er land­fills: CHF 25/t;

b.

for waste de­pos­ited abroad:

1.

in the case of un­der­ground land­fills; CHF 30/t,

2.

in the case of oth­er land­fills: as much as it would cost to de­pos­it the waste in a land­fill in Switzer­land.⁵⁵

^2bis The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may ad­just the rate of the charge un­der para­graph 2 in line with Swiss Con­sumer Price In­dex.⁵⁶

³ The Con­fed­er­a­tion uses the in­come from the charges ex­clus­ively to pay the costs of the fol­low­ing meas­ures:

a.

the pro­vi­sion of a re­gister of pol­luted sites, provided their pro­pri­et­ors have been giv­en the op­por­tun­ity by 1 Novem­ber 2007 to state their opin­ion on in­clu­sion in the re­gister;

b.

the in­vest­ig­a­tion, mon­it­or­ing and re­medi­ation of pol­luted sites in which no waste has been de­pos­ited since 1 Feb­ru­ary 2001 if:⁵⁷

1.

the per­son re­spons­ible can­not be iden­ti­fied or is un­able to pay, or

2.

a sig­ni­fic­ant pro­por­tion of the waste de­pos­ited on the site is mu­ni­cip­al waste;

c.⁵⁸

the in­vest­ig­a­tion, mon­it­or­ing and re­medi­ation of pol­luted sites at shoot­ing ranges that do not serve a pre­dom­in­antly com­mer­cial pur­pose if:

1.

on sites in ground­wa­ter pro­tec­tion zones, no fur­ther waste has been de­pos­ited after 31 Decem­ber 2012,

2.⁵⁹

on oth­er sites, no fur­ther waste has been de­pos­ited after 31 Decem­ber 2020 or only the waste from his­tor­ic­al shoot­ing events or field shoot­ing events that are held no more than once per year and that had already been held reg­u­larly at the same loc­a­tion be­fore 31 Decem­ber 2020;

c^bis.⁶⁰

ad­equate pro­tec­tion meas­ures, such as the use of butts, are taken at his­tor­ic­al shoot­ing events or field shoot­ing events that are held no more than once per year and that had already been held reg­u­larly at the same loc­a­tion be­fore 31 Decem­ber 2020;

d.

the in­vest­ig­a­tion of sites that are not found to be pol­luted (Art. 32d para. 5).

⁴ The pay­ments are made only if the meas­ures taken are en­vir­on­ment­ally com­pat­ible and cost-ef­fect­ive and cor­res­pond to the state of the art. They are paid to the can­tons in ac­cord­ance with the ex­pendit­ure in­curred and amount to:

a.

for pay­ments in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3 let­ter a, a flat-rate pay­ment of 500 francs per site;

b.⁶¹

for pay­ments in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3 let­ter b:

1.

40 per cent of the chargeable costs if no waste has been de­pos­ited at the site since 1 Feb­ru­ary 1996,

2.

30 per cent of the chargeable costs if waste was de­pos­ited at the site after 1 Feb­ru­ary 1996 but no later than 31 Janu­ary 2001.

c.⁶²

for pay­ments in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3 let­ter c:

1.

in the case of 300m shoot­ing ranges, a flat-rate pay­ment of 8000 francs per tar­get,

2.

in the case of oth­er shoot­ing ranges, 40 per cent of the chargeable costs;

d.⁶³

for pay­ments in ac­cord­ance with para­graph 3 let­ter d, 40 per cent of the chargeable costs.⁶⁴

⁵ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil is­sues reg­u­la­tions on the pro­ced­ure for col­lect­ing the charges and mak­ing the pay­ments as well as on the chargeable costs.

⁶ Pro­vi­sion may be made un­der can­ton­al law for can­ton­al charges to fin­ance the in­vest­ig­a­tion, mon­it­or­ing and re­medi­ation of pol­luted sites.