Logo Bayernportal
Home > Procedures

Healing spring; application for state recognition

Springs and fountains can be recognized by the state as "healing springs" under certain conditions.

Responsible for you

Regierung von Schwaben - Sachgebiet 55.1 - Rechtsfragen der Umwelt

Regierung von Schwaben

Street address

Fronhof 10
86152 Augsburg

Postal address

86145 Augsburg

Mehr zur Behörde

Procedure details

In some areas (such as spas or health resorts), water from medicinal springs is to be used for both internal use (i.e. for drinking or inhalation) and external use (for bathing or spa treatments). In order to ensure that the water offered in this way is not only harmless to health, but also has a certain healing effect, certain requirements must be met. These are checked by the state in the procedure for recognition as a medicinal spring. Only if the relevant requirements are met can the spring be recognized by the state as a medicinal spring.

The preservation of medicinal springs must be necessary for reasons of public welfare. This is the case in particular if the water from the spring or well is harmless to health, has a certain quantity (amount of water), a certain physical property (e.g. heat), a certain chemical composition and a certain bacteriological quality.

  • Description of the spring or well
    The documents must include information on the therapeutic purposes for which the spring is to be used, the persons to whom it is to be open for use, the water law decision permitting or approving the extraction, discharge or discharge of the spring water, or the date on which such a decision was applied for. The documents must also contain statements on the protection of the mineral springs (natural protection), on possible risks of qualitative and quantitative impairment and on resulting protective measures, e.g. the need for a protected area for mineral springs.
  • Healing Spring Analysis
    in which the bulk, the physical properties, the chemical composition and the bacteriological condition are presented
  • General site plan on a scale of 1: 25 000 and site plan on the scale of the official cadastral map
    If an application is also made for the designation of a medicinal spring protection area (§ 53 paras. 4 and 5, § 51 para. 2 and § 52 WHG), the plans must show its extent.
  • scaled layer profile of the source (vertical section through the source and the adjacent layers) and for source drillings a scaled borehole profile (vertical section through the borehole and the adjacent layers)
    the underground collection system shall be drawn in
  • Construction plans of the intake structures and the discharge devices

To apply for state recognition, the operator of a medicinal spring must submit five copies of the documents required under Section 1 of the Ordinance on Medicinal Springs (Heilquellen-Verordnung - Heilquellen-V) to the district administrative authority.

The district administrative authority shall forward one copy of the application each to the Institute for Medical Information Processing, Biometry and Epidemiology of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Institute for Water Chemistry and Chemical Balneology of the Technical University of Munich, the Water Management Authority and, if the spring has a saline content of more than 15 g/kg and/or in cases in which the mining authority is authorized to approve the application pursuant to Art. Art. 64 para. 1 sentence 1 BayWG is responsible as the water rights authority, also to the Mining Authority for comment. In particular, the official experts must propose the conditions required to safeguard the existence and quality of the medicinal spring.

The municipalities in whose area the medicinal spring will be developed or discharged must also be consulted on the application.

The district administrative authority, as the official expert, gives its opinion from a health perspective and submits this opinion together with the opinions of the other expert bodies to the district government for a decision.

Administrative court action
Status: 07.06.2024
Editorially responsible for prodecure description: Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Umwelt und Verbraucherschutz
Contains machine translated content. Show the original content