During the last week of August, the city of Sofia sent official letters to several other Bulgaria municipalities asking them to store in their landfills the bales of Sofia’s refuse currently housed at temporary storage facilities in the Kremikovtzi and Novi Iskur boroughs.

However, all the municipalities refused to accept Sofia’s 200 000 tons of baled rubbish.

A ruling by the Environment and Water Affairs Ministry set the bales’ expiry date at three years – and this date has already passed.

As a result, in mid-August 2008, the European Union set September 1 2008 as the deadline for Sofia municipality to solve its refuse problems, by moving and making safe the baled refuse being kept at Kremikovtzi and Gara Iskur.

Given the current situation, the EC had postponed this deadline to the end of October 2008, Deputy Environment Minster Chavdar Georgiev told a news conference on September 2.

Environment and Water Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vanya Ivanova told The Sofia Echo on September 2 that if Bulgaria did not solve the Sofia refuse problem by the end of October, the EU would send the Government a further warning letter.

After getting this letter, the Government would have a further month to react and if nothing were done, the EU would start court action against Bulgaria. Ivanova said that it would be up to the court to decide the size of any financial sanction.

Sofia asked several municipalities that have landfills that are not filled to capacity to accept the refuse. Bulgarian-language daily Dnevnik reported on September 1 that Environment Minister Djevdet Chakurov had said that Plovdiv city council and the municipalities of Montana and Karlovo had already declined to help.

In an interview with private broadcaster bTV on September 2, Plovdiv mayor Slavcho Atanassov said that his city had fulfilled not only its contract but also its moral engagements with Sofia. Plovdiv and Karlovo were the only two entities that agreed to accept 200 000 tons each of Sofia’s refuse during 2007.

“Plovdiv’s interests do not allow us to accept more rubbish,” Atanassov said. He said that Sofia was asking his city to accept a further 120 000 tons, but this quantity was the same that the entire Plovdiv dumped at its Tsalapitsa landfill in one year.

According to local officials, Tsalapitsa had sufficient capacity for a further 600 000 tons, 200 000 tons of which was an inviolable reserve, while the remaining 400 000 tons would be enough for less than three years. “If we accept Sofia’s bales now, our landfill’s life will be less than two years,” Atanassov said.

“I am protecting the interests of Plovdiv. [Sofia mayor Boiko] Borissov will understand me from the viewpoint of a mayor,” he said.

Plovdiv is currently constructing a refuse processing factory in Shishmantsi but it needs a further 15 million leva. Theoretically, if Plovdiv had agreed now to store Sofia’s refuse, the Government would give the money to complete the factory’s construction and it would have been used for both Sofia and Plovdiv, as the two cities are only about 150 km apart, bTV reported.

However, Atanassov said that this is not an option either, because after the factory started operating, it would again need a reserve option to cope with any technical failures, and then Tsalapitsa would have to be used.

The Government did not make public the list of other municipalities that Sofia had asked to store its refuse, but Sevlievo, Troyan, Vratsa and Gorna Malina were also among the recipients.

Although Sevlievo mayor Yordan Stoikov initially had said that there was a possibility for his municipality to accept Sofia’s refuse, he later retracted this. However, Sevlievo has not sent yet an official response to Sofia municipality.

Vratsa mayor Totyu Mladenov said that he had not received a letter requesting his municipality to store Sofia’s refuse, but said that Vratsa did not have enough capacity.

Troyan municipality had by September 3 not announced a response, while Gorna Malina mayor Angel Zhilanov said that Sofia had requested to transport 60 000 cu m refuse to the town landfill. Zhilanov sent his official refusal on August 29.

Gorna Malina had previously also received requests to store part of the baled refuse but had declined. “If we accept, there will be a problem for our region and Elin Pelin, which also dumps its rubbish in our landfill,” Zhilanov said. The equipment was small and had only one entrance for trucks, so access to it was limited, he said.

After all municipalities refused to store Sofia’s refuse, Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Plougchieva said that the Government was discussing a Plan B which would be disclosed on September 5 at a meeting with representatives of the European Commission.

Previously, Deputy Environment Minister Georgiev had announced that the refuse bales might be sent abroad, with one of the options being Romania. On September 2, Chakurov confirmed this option, saying that according to preliminary calculations this would cost up to 120 euro a ton in depots with available capacity, in Austria and Germany, but after adding transport costs, the amount would reach 200 euro a ton. The refuse would most probably be transported by train or by water.

According to Borissov (leader of Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria, known as GERB), the refuse problem was taking on a political dimension and the Bulgarian Socialist Party was using it against GERB with an eye to the 2009 parliamentary elections.

Meanwhile, Sofia was preparing to open another part of the landfill in the capital city’s Souhodol neighbourhood. This, according to the Government, was a temporary solution, although the Souhodol site was closed for about three years after protests by residents of the area. During this time, Plovdiv and Karlovo landfills stored the refuse of Bulgaria’s capital, but after the contracts with those two towns expired, Borissov re-opened the Souhodol landfill, although it is about 300m from houses of Souhodol residents. He still considers the landfill legal.

On August 31, representatives of Souhodol residents told a news conference that they would take court action against representatives of the European Commission (EC) who supported the decision by Sofia municipality to open another part of the landfill in their district, prolonging its lifespan to 2011. The citizens said that they would sue Georges-Stavros Kremlis and Renaldo Mandmets of the EC Environment Directorate, as well as Bulgaria’s Environment and Water Affairs Ministry, the Regional Inspectorate of Environment and Waters (RIEW) and Sofia municipality.

In 2007, Souhodol residents already had started court action against the re-opening of the their landfill. Sofia City Court ruled that the order issued by RIEW to re-open the landfill and use it until 2009 was not legal.

On August 31 2008, residents said that they would abandon peaceful demonstrations in favour of “more radical” action.