In the Walloon Region, the Government decided to gather all the existing legislative and regulatory texts in the field of environment in a single reference document: the Walloon Code of Environment. It should ensure the coordination, the simplification, the coherence and the homogenisation of old law texts concerning environment.
On 27th May 2004, decrees specified the seven great environmental themes (books) the Code of Environment should revolve around. On 3rd March 2005, a decree of the Walloon Government introduced book II of the Code of Environment, regarding water. The decree codified the regulations and set a date of coming into force for the book.
The transposition of legislative, regulatory and administrative provisions into regional law is to be found in this book. Those provisions were necessary for Member States to comply among other things with the two directives concerning the wastewater sanitation: the Directive 91/271/EEC (means directive) and the Directive 2000/60/EC (results directive).
In a nutshell, the Water Code realises a ("European") environmental law related to the water thematic, transcribed on regional level, and constantly evolving (thanks to new knowledge, new techniques, etc.).