About 600 residents of the village of Poibrene, about 55km southeast of Sofia, have filed a collective lawsuit against Bulgaria at the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, claiming that industrial pollution and arsenic poisoning have rendered drinking water reservoirs in the area unusable.

The mayor of Poibrene, Ivan Pandourov, has filed the declarations and complaints signed by more than 600 locals at the European court after pleas in Buglaria fell on deaf ears.

According to Pandourov, speaking to private broadcaster Darik Radio, over the past year the Government had done nothing to redress the potentially lethal and disastrous situation in the region. Furthermore, the Government made no effort to investigate and apprehend the culprits responsible for polluting the water reservoirs, he said.

Bulgaria's Environment Ministry believes the drastic increase of arsenic content to be mainly the result of geologic peculiarities of the region or old pollutants that seethed their way into the water strata, according to MEP Petya Stavreva, quoted by Dnevnik daily.

The Pazardjik regional environment and health care inspectorate began checking the extent of the damage inflicted by the polluted waters in September and expects to have full results by end-November. So far, 250 people from the village have undergone thorough medical examinations.