In the Netherlands, charges apply to industrial and municipal discharges to state waters; they are linked with pollution loads which are computed based on coefficients and converted into population equivalent (p.e.), These systems were initially set up to recover the administrative costs of licensing, monitoring and enforcement, but in recent years, incentives for license holders to continuously reduce their discharges to water have become prominent. In New South Wales, a load-based licensing (LBL) scheme was introduced in 1999 to link license fees to pollutant emissions and to provide incentives to drive down pollution.