The Danube River oil spill caused more than two million leva damage, Environmental and Water Affairs Minister Djevdet Chakurov said October 9.
A 140km-long oil spill entered the Bulgarian and Romanian part of the Danube on October 2 and has already reached the Ukrainian coast. Preliminary data showed the spill was about 1200 cubic m, Chakurov told reporters. Costs included limiting the slicks impact and cleaning the river.
Five days earlier, Chakurov told journalists that Bulgaria did not have a critical situation as a result of the pollution of the Danube with petroleum products.
Chakurov said that not a single dead fish or aquatic bird has been found. However, nearly 50km of the Bulgarian bank was polluted.
All precautions have been taken and the quality of drinking water is being been monitored. Rousses regional governor Maria Dimova banned fishing, irrigating, swimming and drinking from the Danube for the period from October 3 to 4.
The spill did not reach the Danube banks of Kozloduy, Bulgarias only nuclear power plant. However, authorities at the plant will continue to keep boom barriers as the rising waters of the Danube might bring new oil slicks.
Keeping river waters clean is essential for the environment and good for relations between neighbours when a river serves as a border line. Since the oil spill was cited on October 2 in Vidin, which is close to the upstream border with Serbia, and considering the spills length of over 140 km, most observers believe the spill came from Serbia.
Two questions can be asked vis-a-vis the Serbian connection. If the spill actually happened in Serbia, the first question is about the safety conditions of Serbias oil industry along the Danube, because this is not the first time oil leaks have happened in the country.
The second question is about the state of Serbias water monitoring facilities.
If the spill did not happen in Serbia, then logically it would have taken the 140km-long spill at least three days to pass through the country. In this situation, the spill could not pass unsighted and, if they didnt at least try to minimise the disaster, Serbian authorities could have warned Bulgarian and Romanian states about the coming danger.
But no warnings were issued. Both Bulgaria and Romania had to organise emergency units trying to intercept the spill which left no chances for its absorption. Hopefully, Ukrainians are at least aware of what has left from the oil spill and this would prevent further damages to the rivers flora and fauna.
The first question, at least today, seems resolved. The Serbian side officially admitted that there were indications that the oil spill happened as a result of an incident in the Nis Prahovo oil refinery.
Indications was the key word in the October 4 media statement of Serbian ministry of agriculture.
The Serbian Water-Management Inspectorate (WMI) has established that an unspecified quantity of crude oil and other oils were spilled into the Danube by accident from a fuelling installation at Prahovo. There are indications that that two kinds of pollutants have been spilled - oil and crude oil - and that the cause of pollution are two separate substances, the statement said.
Serbia had received a signal concerning the spill as late as the evening of October 2, the day it entered Bulgarian and Romanian waters. An October 6 article in the Serbian newspaper Politika cited Serbian science and environmental protection minister Alexander Popovic who said that his ministry did not have competence in the matter and that it could not comment on the pollution. The Serbian Water Resources Directorate is authorized to deal with the matter, stated representatives of the ministry.
The Politika article also cited a statement from NIS (the Serbian oil industry) who partly admitted guilt for the oil spill and claimed responsibility for 100 kilos of the crude oil leak.
However this statement is suspicious because the admission of the leakage of 0.1 tons of fuel, cannot account for a spill 140 km long. So it is either there had been several joint polluters responsible for the appearance of the oil spill in the Danube or that NIS misinformed about the quantity of the fuel that leaked out.
Asked on October 5 whether Bulgaria will claim damages from the Serbian side, Chakurov said: There is a key principle in environment: the polluter pays.
Chakurov recalled that immediately after the slick was reported in the Bulgarian section of the river on October 2, he sent a note to all Danube Convention countries urging an effort to identify the source and scale of pollution.
Once the source is clear, it is only natural to claim damages because the action for eliminating the consequences of pollution require solid financial resources, Chakurov said. Bulgaria and Romania were considering joint action in that respect, Chakurov noted. Once the damage is fully evaluated, Bulgaria will ask Serbia for compensation, he said.
Finding the real cause and asking for compensation is matter for the future. Saving the river from oil pollution is on Romania and Bulgarias agenda now.
On October 5, Rousse decided to prevent further movement of the oil slick along the Danube River at 585th kilometre at Palets Island. The operation used a novel method, in which kaolin is used as an absorber of the fuel oil. A river barrier consisting of floating booms, ships and two separate ship sections of 80 m each was constructed at the Palets island in a bid to stop the spill.
On October 6 Bulgaria asked the European Commission (EC) for help to cope with the oil spill. The help included satellite photos of the polluted area.
Romania, on the other hand, has notified Bulgaria of its readiness to send two specialised vessels to participate in the cleaning of the Bulgarian section of the Danube. Also, the Czech Republic, responding to a Bulgarian request to all signatories of the Convention for the Protection of the Danube, has agreed to provide technical and expert assistance. The specific action will be specified subsequently.
Meanwhile a statement from the State Agency for Civil Protection (SACP) said on October 6 that smaller oil slicks continue entering the Bulgarian section of the river.
According to Hristian Kirilov, SACP spokesperson in Vidin, this additional oil was a result of the rising level of the Danube in the past 24 hours which washes the fuel oil from the river banks, the boats and pontoons. At present, special teams are registering and describing in detail the polluted areas for the cleaning of which the mayors of municipalities along the flow of the river will be responsible. They will have to organise the cleaning and to provide landfills for the storage of the waste, the regional administration in Vidin said. According to Kirilov, the biggest pollution is in the 20 km strip of coast in the region of Gomotartsi and Koshava villages, where the deposits are between 1 and 1.5 m wide.
The whole situation can be summarised in the words of Vidin mayor Ivan Tsenov, who on October 5 told reporters: The Danubes cross-border pollution showed that there is no information exchange between the member states of the Danube River Protection Convention. Because of that, there are no adequate measures for preventing the ecological problem that appeared.
