At a working meeting yesterday, the Deputy Ministers of Environment and Water Reneta Koleva and Petar Dimitrov, discussed with the directors of RIEWs, the Basin Directorates, and the National Parks the progress with the MOEW initiative to have contaminated areas cleaned throughout the country.

All the Regional Inspectorates for Environment and Water (RIEWs) have already conducted meetings with the mayors and asked them to take strict measures to fulfill the obligations of local authorities under the Waste Management Act. RIEWs required from mayors of all municipalities within the respective territories controlled by them to present action plans for dealing with waste-contaminated sites within populated areas and outside them.

According to the prescriptions, the municipal mayors were to carry out inspections on areas with waste pollution, including a complete scrutiny of the riverbeds adjacent to urbanized territories. All municipal authorities and directors of the Regional Road Administrations were also to indicate the sections that are most often recognized as waste disposal sites. They have already presented in the inspections short-, medium-, and long-term measures, including specific activities to solve the problems with waste in settlements. Actions must be taken to clear contaminated sites by March 31^st.

In this regard, as of April 1^st, the RIEWs will begin inspections to see if the instructions for the municipalities have been fulfilled for each previously identified polluted site. It will be checked what are the results of the implemented measures in respect to preventing renewed pollution. It will also be inspected whether the municipalities have taken actions to organize and control the activities related to the generation, collection (including separate), storage, transportation, and treatment of household and construction waste in each populated place. The purpose of this control is to prevent the disposal of waste in unauthorized places, the formation of landfills and the re-contamination of cleaned areas.

The initiative by the Ministry of Environment and Water is in continuation of one of its  priorities for solving waste pollution problems. The regional inspectorates respond to signals from citizens, but the increased control aims to achieve sustainable results and to stop the disposal of waste outside regulated sites.