The assessment of a river agreement: the case of the river Reyssouze - For 20 years, "river contracts " have been widely used in France. They aim at making agents aware of their responsibilities via a decentralized water management. The "river contract Reyssouze" (a river in Ain, France) studied in this paper has led to civil engineering (water purification plants, hydraulic structures...). However, this river is still quite polluted (hypertrophication) and many agents have not modified their behavior regarding the river. We show that the efficiency of this kind of contract is very limited because of a lack of measures to enforce the laws in the farm sector.
