Water crisis: Bulgaria’s caretaker PM orders talks
Bulgaria’s caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev has ordered that a meeting be convened at he Ministry of Environment and Water as soon as possible in connection with the reduced volume of the Ticha dam and the shortage of water for drinking and domestic needs, the government information service said on November 7.
The statement said that Glavchev had been contacted by the Shoumen district governor, who had reported the serious situation in the district.
Glavchev expects the Environment Ministry to organise a working meeting with the participation of all relevant ministries as soon as possible to determine measures to deal with the crisis, the statement said.
Ticha Dam, in the Shoumen district in north-eastern Bulgaria, is the main source of water supply and provides drinking water for hundreds of thousands of households in the Shoumen and Turgovishte districts.
The statement said that given the scale of the water shortage problem in Bulgaria, Glavchev has asked the caretaker Environment and Water Minister Petar Dimitrov to consider convening a meeting of the High Advisory Council on Water in order to attract additional expert and scientific opinion to deal with the crisis.
Another mechanism that could be activated in order to engage all responsible agencies and improve coordination and interaction between them is through the Water Coordination Council, the government information service said.
According to the Water Act, this council carries out the integration of water policy and sectoral policies in the water sector and includes representatives of nine ministries and the National Association of Municipalities in the Republic of Bulgaria.
As chairperson of the council, the Minister of Environment and Water can call a special meeting to discuss the report of the working group to deal with water scarcity, created by order of Glavchev, and to propose measures and actions as a matter of urgency regarding the problem, the statement said.
The statement came two days after the Environment and Water Ministry issued a statement on November 5 appealing for urgent action because of the limited water volumes in the dams.
Nine of the dams for drinking and domestic water supply have low levels compared with previous years.
Irrigation provision for the 2025 season for six of the dams is a concern, the ministry said.
For November 2024, the permitted water volumes have to be reduced.
The ministry manages the waters of 52 complex and significant dams, monitoring their condition daily.
The sum of the volumes available in them as of October 25 was 3255 million cubic metres, which represents 49.8 per cent of the sum of their total volumes.
The ministry called for urgent actions to be taken to ensure the drinking and domestic water supply of the settlements along the southern Black Sea coast, as well as for the water and sanitation operators to specify their requests for the annual schedule for 2025, taking into account all possible reserve and alternative water sources, and the permitted limits in the issued permits and available volumes in dams.
Meanwhile, Bulgarian news agency BTA reported that in Lovech, water restrictions are being increased by a further hour from the night of November 7.
Water supply will be cut off at 10pm, not 11pm, and resumed at 6am.
If the drought continues and there is no rain by the end of the month, it will most likely be necessary to introduce restrictions for some hours in the afternoon, as is the case in Pleven, water utility head Danail Sabevski said.
Lovech, Teteven, Yablanitsa and several settlements in the district have water restrictions because of drying up of water sources and reduced flow.
Some of the villages have water only for two or three hours every five days, others, such as the village of Dabrava, have been without water supply for several months and use water from water carriers.
Bulgarian National Radio reported that Stanislav Gorov, mayor of Kocherinovo in the Kyustendil district, had asked the Environment and Water Ministry to increase water volumes, failing which a state of emergency would have to be declared. The report said that Gorov earlier had written to several institutions about the crisis, but had had no reply.
As The Sofia Globe reported at the time, a preliminary report by Bulgaria’s national weather bureau on October 31 said that in October this year, the drought deepened in most of Bulgaria and in most of the country, the monthly amounts of rain were below the climatic norm. In October, the water quantities of the rivers in Bulgaria were below the average water thresholds and around the low water thresholds, the report said.
(Photo: Ivan Prole/ sxc.hu)
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