Years ago, the former chief architect of Sofia, Petar Dikov, prepared a project for geothermal waters in Sofia and how they can be used to heat large buildings.
“The problem with geothermal energy is very important and, in my opinion, will become increasingly important. It is high time that the authorities pay attention and stop making fun of the topic“, said Petar Dikov, who is now the chairman of the Board of the Union of Architects, in “Face to Face“ on bTV.
“NDK has a room that was built for an energy center. As far as I know, it is now empty. There is a deposit - Lozenets, for which the Sofia Municipality has been granted a free exploitation license by the state. At one time, they used the water from this deposit for the public bath in the "Lozenets" district, the architect said.
"In the center of this Lozenets deposit, which is around the "Transfiguration of the Lord" temple, the water is 52-54 degrees. There is enough resource to use for heating. Even the idea back then was that after the heat was taken away to heat the National Palace of Culture, the remaining water with a temperature of 26-27 degrees would feed the "Spartak" pool, because there they also incur huge costs for heating the water," explained architect Dikov.
According to him, the bills 13 years ago showed that this would cost about 10-11 million leva.
"At that time, the National Palace of Culture paid 3 million leva to "Toplofikatsiya" for heating. Even these 11 million included a new drilling. This means that this investment pays off in 3-4 years“, explained Petar Dikov.
„The late Prof. Kostadin Shterev claimed that there are 500 megawatts of thermal energy under us that God has given us, and we import gas to pay dearly and excessively for our heating. This is a resource that has been given to us for free“, he said.
Illegal construction in the Baba Alino area
„Since the case with Baba Alino came out, I have been constantly asking myself how this is possible. So far, I still don't have an answer“, said Petar Dikov.
„There are purely urban planning and architectural problems for which no one has yet given an answer as to how they happened. Separately, there are others who are connected to the entire structure of the state“, he commented.
According to him, there are no innocents in this case and everything must come to light.
Dikov made an analogy with the case from 16 years ago with the “customs settlement“ near the “Ivaylovgrad“ dam.
“There were dozens of buildings there, some of which were built in the basin of the dam. Another part was built on state land without any ownership documents. The case has been in the media for several weeks. I am interested in what the fate of this settlement was. I doubt that they were destroyed“, said Petar Dikov.
According to him, these two cases should be linked to see how the state acts in similar situations.
According to him, each building must have the relevant projects that go through an approval procedure. There must also be control during the construction itself.
“The colleagues from Varna showed projects that were written in Russian, probably prepared by Ukrainian architects. How were these projects prepared, do they have a constructive expertise, to what standards were they made – clearly not according to our standards? This is also a question that has yet to be investigated“, said the architect.