Water law of the former GDR

In contrast to the "old" Federal Republic, where the Water Resources Act enacted in 1959 has been retained in its basic features and only repeatedly adapted to new developments by amendments, the GDR with its Water Law of 1982 completely discarded the statutory provisions of 1963. The most important reason for this is probably that the 1963 Water Law contained some downright revolutionary passages regarding water protection that, unfortunately, were not implemented in practice. One example is the requirement that the "withdrawal of process water from watercourses by industrial enterprises producing wastewater ... must take place downstream of the wastewater discharge" (§3 para. 2, letter c of the 1963 Water Law).