The state should do its job with waste management, instead of the Minister of Environment and Water suggesting that there is a problem at the Sofia plant. There is no problem with the disposal of the Sofia plant in Sadinata, the problem is with the unregulated landfills that poison the soil on private land throughout Sofia.
This was stated at a joint briefing by the mayor of Sofia Vasil Terziev, deputy mayor for ecology Nadezhda Bobcheva, the director of the waste plant Nikolay Savov, the director of the Sofia Inspectorate - Nikolay Nedelkov and municipal councilors from the PP-DB-SS.
The reason for the briefing was the convened extraordinary committee on ecology of the Municipal Assembly in connection with a statement by the Minister of Environment and Water from last Friday (March 14), in which Sofia was cited in a list of municipalities that experience difficulties in disposing of waste from garbage collection.
“I don't know who misled the minister, but Sofia does not have a problem with garbage from the plant's point of view,” said the mayor.
The new management of the Sofia Municipality and the plant has found over 90% landfilling and the danger that within less than a year there will be no place to dispose of Sofia's waste. This landfilling rate has been drastically reduced and contracts have been signed for the recovery of all RDF - things that had not been done for years. This is what the mayor also said.
“What is not happening, however, and where we have a very big problem with garbage, is everything else that is in the hands of the Ministry of Environment and Water, but we do not see this same coordinated, very multi-institutional attack on the problems.”
Vasil Terziev cited the problem of illegal landfills as a major threat to the environment, which is neglected by the ministry and the responsible investigative services, to which the municipality has repeatedly sent signals.
A video published by the mayor earlier today shows six trucks entering one of the largest unregulated landfills in Sofia, where soil and construction waste have been illegally deposited for years, during an inspection by the municipality and the Sofia Inspectorate. Due to the scale of the problem, the Sofia Municipality proposes to criminalize illegal dumping.
The Sofia Inspectorate has issued 478 acts for violations found in the transportation of soil and construction waste and in inspections of unregulated landfills in 2024 and over 130 more since the beginning of this year.
“The smoke that the minister let out on Friday in the National Assembly is part of a very dubious synchronization between the Ministry of Environment, Water and Environment, the investigative institutions and the economic majority in the Social Security Council.” This was said by Deputy Mayor Nadezhda Bobcheva during the briefing.
“Meanwhile, we from the municipality and the plant are subject to daily inspections on all kinds of administrative and technical details. For absolutely unfounded and insignificant things, the investigators are used and questioned for hours without it being clear what problem they are even trying to solve.”
“And while all these people and these institutions are being used as bludgeons, I want to say all these things, to repeat them a third time, so that it becomes clear, that we have done over the past year.”
She cites signals filed by the municipality about the unregulated landfills - already during our joint investigation with the ACF in the summer of 2024, but also repeatedly after that, signals to the prosecutor's office about threats against the municipality's inspectors, signals to a number of institutions about the abuse of medical waste. All services have been notified about the systematic abuses of construction waste, as well as the financial abuses of the previous management of the plant, but there is no result.
Nadezhda Bobcheva also said that Sofia has become a leader at the national level in what is undoubtedly the greatest effort in the last decade to improve the recycling system.
“We have created a model for requirements for organizations that have responsibility for packaging waste, which all municipalities now want to implement. The Association of Municipalities supported us. Where is the state? Where is the deposit system that Bulgaria has been waiting for decades? Will the minister answer this question?”
Municipal councilor from PP-DB-SS Simeon Stavrev said that in addition to the state, another group of people who betray the citizens of Sofia with their inaction - those from the economic majority of the SOS - owe answers to the people's questions.
“The situation is the thief says catch the thief. Where are the representatives of GERB, BSP, ITN and the breakaways from Vazrajdane, when we witness abuses in the companies under their control? Where is the extraordinary commission for the scandalous 2.4 million leva commissions for gas? Where is the commission for the leaked 8,000 liters of fuel in the Motor Transport Department? Where is the extraordinary commission for the scandalous contracts of the previous government with Bent Oil? Why didn't GERB sign the report so that we could sell compost - something that the people of Sofia have been waiting for for years? Where were the now activated members of the SOS when the installations for separating aluminum and plastic were not working - a problem that Vasil Terziev's team solved and we are already realizing record amounts of RDF?”
The municipal councilors of the PP-DB-SS, Nadezhda Bobcheva and Nikolay Savov did not appear at the extraordinary convened committee on ecology, “to make it clear that this committee is only a screen with which the economic majority of the SOS enters the synchronized action of the new management of the Ministry of Environment and Water in yet another attempt to sabotage Sofia,” said Simeon Stavrev.