• Air quality indicators in Dimitrovgrad are within limits.

On October 3, the regular monitoring of the Regional Inspectorate of Environment and Water - Haskovo established the release of fugitive emissions in significant quantities from the production site of the combustion plant of TPP “Maritsa” 3 AD in Dimitrovgrad.

It has been established that the cause for the fugitive emissions from the boiler house is a technical problem of one of the smoke fans. The operator has been instructed to fix the technical problem immediately and to restore the normal extraction of smoke as part of the combustion process.

In order to stop the release of fugitive emissions from the boiler house, the steam generator of “Maritsa” 3 AD was extinguished the following day, Wednesday, 4 October 2023.

The values for sulphur dioxide and fine particulate matter have been within the permissible limits since the beginning of this week. This is shown by the data from the automatic measuring station in “Rakovski”, positioned in the center of Dimitrovgrad.

From Monday, October 2, when the steam generator of TPP “Maritsa” 3 AD was fired, until its extinction on October 4 at 09:33 a.m., the constant monitoring of the data in real time received from the measuring station in Dimitrovgrad shows no exceedances of the hourly average standard for sulfur dioxide of 350 micrograms per cubic meter.

The alarm threshold is defined as the level of concentration of an air pollutant at which there is a risk to human health from short-term exposure and emergency measures need to be taken. The defined alert threshold for sulphur dioxide is 500 micrograms per cubic metre measured over three consecutive hours. To date, no exceedance of the alert threshold has been recorded.

No exceedances of the daily average standard of 50 micrograms per cubic metre for fine particulate matter (PM10) have also been recorded during the period of operation of the thermal power plant.

The Regional Inspectorate for Environment and Water in Haskovo conducts constant control and monitoring of the operator of TPP “Maritsa” 3 AD in Dimitrovgrad.