The project includes a hazardous waste incinerator and is similar to a project the Ministry of Environment proposed several years ago. At the public meeting designed to allay local fears about the project’s impacts, local villager Georgi Binev commented to officials, “Why are you still lying to us? You’ve been showing us the same presentation for the last four years. Tell us about the dioxins!”
The National Hazardous Waste Center is planned to be located near the village of Kovatchevo in Bulgaria’s Stara Zagora region. It will include two hazardous waste incinerators with capacities of 15 000 and 30 000 tons of hazardous waste per year, a tank farm for liquid organic waste, a solidification facility and landfills. An additional landfill is to be built in the Sofia area. According to the project’s feasibility study, half of the EUR 55.5 million investment is expected to be covered by an ISPA [1] grant and half from a European Investment Bank loan.
Ivaylo Hlebarov, from Bulgarian NGO Za Zemiata/For the Earth, said, “We are very concerned that the Ministry of Environment does not want to find the safest solution for the hazardous waste. The Ministry’s main priority is to get the ISPA grant at any cost.”