Three years after the protests in the Souhodol district against the landfill in the area started, area residents staged a commemoration demonstration under the slogan “Three years since the police act of outrage in Souhodol”. After all this time, the district is still storing the refuse of Sofia.

Approached for comment by The Sofia Echo on July 7, Sofia city spokesperson Nikolai Boev said that the city’s refuse would be stored in Souhodol’s landfill until its capacity was fully exhausted, which is expected to happen no earlier than the beginning of 2009.

The three companies of Equest Investment Fund – Wolf, Chistota and Ditz – are responsible for transporting the refuse to the landfill. Their contract was extended by one year and would expire in March 2009, Boev said.

Asked how the Souhodol district copes with the excessive odour coming from the landfill, Boev said that the Regional Inspectorate on Environment and Waters (RIEW) regularly conducts audits in the area and has found no problem.

The same day, Ventsislav Bozhinov, from the Protection of the Health and Lives of the Population and the Environment of Souhodol association, told The Sofia Echo that RIEW had been repeating these checks for years but the number of obituary notices and people with cancer had been continuously increasing. He said that in the morning and when the air is cooler, the disgusting odour from the landfill could be sensed particularly well because the wind in that area flows from west to east. It brings not only a stench but also poisonous gases including nitrogen oxides, sulphur compounds and carbon hydrogen, which are exceptionally dangerous to human health, he said.

Bozhinov said that although Sofia City Council supported the association's appeal against RIEW decision to re-open the landfill, the municipality continues to transport waste there.

In 2009, when Souhodol’s landfill is exhausted and closed down, the European Commission (EC) will give money for its re-cultivation, Bulgarian-language Zagrada.bg reported on July 6.

In the beginning of July, Renaldo Mandmets, of the EC’s Regional Policy Directorate General, warned that as a member of the EU Sofia should find a solution to the refuse problems quickly. Other EU countries had shown that after joining the EU the population would increase significantly.

Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov, Environment Minister Djevdet Chakurov, Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Plougchieva and representatives of the EC’s Regional Policy and Environment Directorates General reached an agreement on financing the construction of a refuse utilising factory near the Sofia village of Yana, in the area of Kremikovtzi steel mill. Money from the state budget, as well as finance from Environment Operational Programme will be used, and in addition, the municipality will take a loan from the European Bank and the European Investment bank for Reconstruction and Development. By the end of 2008, projects and procedures on the new factory’s environmental assessment would be ready, the officials said, as quoted by Zagrada.bg.

The government also promised to move the baled refuse, currently stored in Kremikovtzi and Gara Iskur temporary depots, to an alternative area. The depots were used until the Souhodol landfill was re-opened in the beginning of the year. By the end of 2008, the state would need to find another place to store the bales and close down the two depots sites.

After the decision was made to build the new factory in the village of Yana, local residents started raising voices against it. They said they would demand compensation for placing the refuse reprocessing factory near their homes.

“We will insist that the city hall refine the village and put asphalt on the streets,” Yana mayor Georgi Taskov (Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria, GERB) said, as quoted by Dnevnik daily.

Taskov said the assessment of the village had not been correct. He said that the area provided water, as there were springs and irrigating channels, but the city stated the opposite.

The residents will soon decide whether or not they will start protests. According to Taskov, however, some are tempted by the possible employment opportunities the refuse factory would provide.

The village population is not the luckiest one in Sofia. Kremikovtzi steel mill has been polluting the air and soil of Yana for years, as well as the factory’s tailing pond - used to store toxic waste produced when separating minerals from rocks. Local residents said that for most of their lives they had been fighting, unsuccessfully, to close down Kremikovtzi. They expect that the same will happen with the new refuse factory.

According to Dnevnik, there are, however, questions that remain unanswered since the city hall started considering building a waste factory 10 years ago. What will be the advantages of having a new factory; how much will it cost to build the factory; what part of the cost will be state financed and how much will be taken from tax payers pockets; how will the new factory influence the refuse tax companies and residents of Sofia have to pay; will it be worth having the factory there when it is producing such harmful emissions, or will they have a solution to this; why is the life of such a big investment only 30 years and will it be effective. According to Dnevnik, the state and Sofia municipality owed the village population answers to these questions before they began the project.