Water boards are an actual layer of government in the Netherlands, they levy taxes and there are elections for them. I don't know their exact powers regarding contracts.
> Dutch water boards had relative financial autonomy, which protected them from falling fortunes of the central government and allowed the securities that they issued to survive. The lives of perpetual loans typically were “cut short by imprudent financing, government recall, or the misfortunes of wars and revolutions,” Rouwenhorst and Goetzmann write.
