Nearly 100 Irakli and Emona property owners blocked the Bourgas-Varna road on November 3 in protest against a construction ban imposed by Environment and Water Affairs Minister Djevdet Chakurov.

Protesters said the coastal areas that fall under the ban have always contained arable land and are not environmentally sensitive. Development planned for the protected regions involved only the construction of low-rise buildings and luxury tourist facilities, property owners said.

Irkali and Emona are among the last remaining undeveloped, wild areas along Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.

The road block was the most recent display of the conflict between plot owners and environmentalist in the region.

Chakurov issued the ban on August 4, answering a series of public protests against construction in Irkali and Emona. Environmentalists argued the areas contain rare plant and animal species. The order is valid for one year. It bans all building except for clearing stations for waste, drinking water processing and roads and landslides consolidation.

The ban was an important, though temporary, success for environmentalists. Plot owners thought differently. With the November 3 roadblock, they generated publicity for their demands. In a statement read before the TV cameras on the national private channel bTV, plot owners expressed their disagreement and disappointment with Chakurov’s order.

“Our grandparents bought this land and now we do not have the right to deal with it because of the ban,” the statement said.

Plot owners argued that the protected area currently under Chakurov ban was far larger than necessary. Their land should have been left outside the protected zones because it had no rare plants or animal species, they said. The ban is in force over more than 9600 acres near the beach.

Plot owners said they would send a declaration to President Georgi Purvanov and Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. The declaration will demand that their plots be excluded from the protected region.

Both plot owners and environmentalists have legal grounds to protect their interests stemming from a 1998 government-approved plan for development on the coast.

“According to this plan, Irakli and Emona were not regarded as protected areas and our municipality had no legal reasons to refuse issuing construction permits,” Nessebar mayor Nikolai Trifonov told bTV. Irakli and Emona are under the jurisdiction of Nessebar municipality, which issues all construction permits for the areas.

“With Chakurov’s current ban, we decided to stop issuing permits and since August 4 not a single one has been issued. However, the ban caused some controversy,” the mayor said. “Chakurov’s order contradicts this general plan adopted in 1998. We  simply can not follow the ban without contradicting the general development plan from 1998 which is still in force.”

This general development plan is one of the main reasons for the plot owners’ protest.

On October 31 environmentalists showed their determination to protect Irakli and all the other Bulgarian wild areas from construction. At a news conference on Black Sea Day, Andrei Kovachev of the Balkans Association for Wild Nature said he expected  nine zones along the Black Sea coast to be announced as protected areas of the national NATURA 2000 network by the end of November. “We expect Chakurov to submit for approval by the Government a declaration for these purposes,” he said.   
The following zones are expected to be declared protected: Strandja, Maslen Cape-Romotamo-Alepou, Pomorie, Emine-Irakli, all along the Southern Black Sea, Shkorpilovtsi-Kamchia, the valley of the Batova River, Balchik-Kaliakra-Kamen Bryag, the Shabla Pond, the Dourankoulak Pond, the St Anna Beach and the beach at the Cosmos camping site, all along the northern Black Sea.

The environmentalists expect a revision of the construction permits for developments in these areas. They claim that the past couple of years have seen haphazard issuing of such permits, many of which without environmental impact assessments. The environmentalists warned that unless the permit system is revised, the coast will be damaged irretrievably.

If these nine zones are declared protected areas, plot owners will have no legal right to protest. The November 3 road block is unlikely to be the last word on the issue.