For months we have been signaling about a huge illegal landfill in "Mladost" in dangerous proximity to the Kalna River, on private agricultural land. We are organizing a meeting of all parties involved in the topic - the regional administration, the Sofia Inspectorate, RIEW, SRZI, Municipal Agriculture Service, PUDO Directorate, MAF, 7 Regional Offices of the Sofia Regional Directorate of the Ministry of Agriculture. Everyone confirms that they will come, but RIEW does not come. Instead, they go to the ANOTHER inspection at the SPTO at the signal of the GERB reporter from the Sofia Municipal Council. This was announced by Sofia Mayor Vasil Terziev on the occasion of the 15th inspection of the Regional Inspectorate for Environment, Water and Waste Management (RIEW) in a year and a half at the municipal waste treatment plant (SPTO).
He recalls that all RIEW inspections so far have established that there is no problem at the SPTO, but that “this does not stop institutional harassment from trying to find a problem where there is none”.
“They have harnessed the entire state apparatus in a showy action to attack a working municipal enterprise. Why? Because his reform led to the discovery and termination of schemes for millions with patrons at the highest levels,” claims the mayor of Sofia.
Today's inspection by the Regional Inspectorate for Environmental Protection and Water is joint with the Sofia Health Inspectorate and fire safety representatives, and its goal is to check, based on a signal from Sofia municipal councilors, whether the employees at the enterprise have access to drinking water and whether the plant has contracts for the destruction of pests.
Vasil Terziev also reminds that just a day ago (on April 8) there was another inspection at the SPTO, led by the Deputy Minister of Environment and Water - Viktor Atanasov, which again established the same thing as in the previous ones - that the plant is operating according to the rules and in accordance with its comprehensive permit. He says that the Sofia Municipality is not worried about inspections, but that there is nothing accidental in the coordinated attack by GERB and BSP at the national level and there is nothing accidental in Sofia.
“It is a red flag when you see GERB and BSP uniting in common “causes” and aggressively raising topics that they have not been involved in before. A red flag - which means that the cause is money.”
The mayor also announced that the Sofia Municipality will soon announce the new contracts for garbage collection. “The economic partners of BSP and GERB do not like at all that the conditions under them will now be advantageous for Sofia residents, and not for companies. They also don't like the fact that the plant and the inspectorate are run by uncompromising directors who don't conveniently turn a blind eye to irregularities.
“The state's failure to deal with illegal dumps across the country is only being resisted in Sofia. The state's failure to introduce a truly working recycling system is only being adequately responded to in Sofia. The failure of the Ministry of Environment and Water and the Ministry of Health to put hazardous hospital waste in order is only being exposed in Sofia.”
“All these battles for the elementary service of managing waste in a way that is safe for people's health and environmentally friendly,” says Terziev, “have turned out to be more than just efforts to improve a dysfunctional system. They have turned out to be a front against a huge apparatus that patronizes schemes worth hundreds of millions of leva every year.”