In the program "120 Minutes" on bTV on September 28, Marin Nikolov presented satellite photos and cadastral maps of the resort village of "Elenite", which was flooded by torrential rains.
After the disaster that claimed four lives, the main question is who allowed construction on the river in the village and is this in violation of the law. Within a week, the state acknowledged the problem, but it turned out that back in 2009, the Basin Directorate had seen problematic construction on the river, but neither the Municipality of Nessebar, nor the construction control, nor the regional government, nor the prosecutor's office took any action.
The management of the holiday village “Elenite“ came out with the position that during the construction the riverbed was not interrupted, but only covered.
“At the base of the complex there is a massive drainage collector with a width of about 20 meters, a height of 2 meters and a length of over 700 meters, which has been functioning without problems for more than 30 years and successfully diverts rainwater from the mountain to the sea. However, with such an unprecedented water mass, even the most robust engineering solutions are powerless against nature“, states the position of the holiday village.
Is the covering of the river in “Elenite“ legal and reliable?
The course of the river under the village remains invisible to us for now. We can only see water draining into an underground channel on the river's path through a shaft on the site of the aquapark built above.
The only competent authority that can say whether this correction of the riverbed was adequate and whether there were no fatal narrowings and interruptions in the channel somewhere under the resort village is the Basin Directorate of the Black Sea Region.
“Someone did it, considering that with these parameters, in this form and in this construction, it would work. In the normal process, this project should come to us to assess whether the project has been calculated correctly, whether the watershed and all other parameters have been taken into account, whether the maximum rainfall has been taken into account“, says Yavor Dimitrov, director of the Basin Directorate for the Black Sea Region.
However, no one from “Elenite“ has sought the Basin Directorate for correction of the river bed over the years, its director tells us.
In the historical photos in Google Earth, we have already shown how the properties on the Drashtela River appeared in 2010. At that time, the law did not yet oblige investors to request an opinion from the Basin Directorate before construction, says their boss. However, the employees of the directorate were obliged to respond to signals from citizens about construction on a river, which was and is a violation of the Water Act. And there was just such a signal.
There was a signal for construction on the river as early as 2009.
„In 2009, it was established as a result of a signal that the covering of the river was not carried out in accordance with the due legal procedure and that is why we have signaled the Municipality of Nessebar, the Regional Prosecutor's Office and the Regional Administration. Based on our signal, a file was opened in the prosecutor's office and we have a resolution to terminate the file“, says the director of the Basin Directorate for the Black Sea Region.
We ask the Regional Prosecutor's Office-Nessebar what it found during its inspection in 2009 and why it did not see a problem in the covering of the river. The following is a response from the press center of the General Prosecutor's Office that they will not inform us because “the prosecutor who initiated the inspection has died“.
There are responses from both the Nessebar Municipality and the RDNSK that the construction works are being carried out in accordance with duly issued construction permits.
Thus, the information from the Basin Directorate about construction on the river in 2009 remains without consequences. Why – Yavor Dimitrov has no answer.
Established, but without further action – and so on until the fatal floods that took 4 lives. We also ask the Nessebar Municipality – have they accepted the opinions of the Basin Directorate about “Elenite“ and how did they react? Did they seek their approval for construction works there? Instead of answering our question, the mayor of Nessebar Nikolay Dimitrov released a video statement in which, together with the chief architect of the municipality Valentin Dimov, he explains how the plans for the development of “Elenite“ were adopted.
During the inspections of documents in the municipality, commissioned by the Minister of Regional Development Ivan Ivanov, it turned out that documentation was missing for the two largest properties built on the Kozluka River in “Elenite“ - the “Negresco“ hotel and “Atlantis“ water park. Civic activists from Nessebar doubt that the lack of this particular documentation is accidental.
A day later, in order to prove that the holiday village “Elenite“ was built with state approvals, a lawyer for the businessman Vetko Arabadzhiev, who is associated with him, sent to bTV photos of construction documents for the “Negresco“ complex - the property whose documents the state does not disclose.
In this opinion, signed by the acting chief architect of Nessebar, we read: “I consider it a lawful assumption to develop a project for a detailed development plan for regulation“. The opinion is at the request of the investor from 2007 for the construction of several properties, including the “Negresco“ complex.
According to the owner of flooded apartments in Elenite, Greta Ganeva, however, the cadastral map, both before and after 2010, states that the hotel's terrain is a river, i.e. public state property. How did the municipal officials in Nessebar not read what everyone can see by pressing a few keys? According to lawyer Ganeva, the permitted construction here is a legal absurdity. According to her, the interruption of the river noted in the cadastre only at the location of the hotel is also absurd. Because there is no way for a river to interrupt itself for a while and then continue.