site.btaUPDATED Environment Minister Commits to Undertake Thorough Inspection of Air Pollution Sources in Ruse

"I commit to a very thorough inspection of the sources of air pollution in Ruse [on the Danube], not as a one-off but rather on an ongoing basis," Environment and Water Minister Julian Popov said on Monday evening during a meeting with citizens in the Danube city. 

The purpose of his visit was to seek solutions to the problems together with the local authorities and other state institutions to ensure a clean environment for the life and health of the city's residents. The meeting lasted nearly three hours. A number of issues were raised as well as demands to address the problem.

Rostislav Kandilarov, chairman of a local environmentalist association, said that it is necessary to prepare an analysis of the air pollution situation in Ruse, to increase the expert capacity and equipment of the Regional Environmental and Water Inspectorate (RIEW) and the Executive Environmental Agency by increasing the staff, updating the tools and appointing specialists in industrial chemistry, updating the legislation in the field of environmental protection, control and administrative and criminal liability of enterprises.

"We've been working on the case of Ruse for a long time and we made commitments a long time ago, and now we're just reaffirming them. One of the main commitments of our work is on legislation and regulation in general to deal with odours. A working group with 40 people from various institutions has been formed on this. Our goal is to have it ready with the analyses in the coming month to propose changes in the legislation regarding odours," Popov said. 

According to him, the issue is extremely complex, requiring an analysis of the experience of many countries because there is no European legislation or regulations in this direction. 

Popov committed to a more thorough analysis of the air quality condition, of the sources, of the problems that have accumulated, in order to have a clear basis to work on.

 The environment minister expressed willingness to initiate an analysis of the health issue in Ruse together with other institutions. He said it should be investigated whether diseases in the area significantly deviate from teh national average. 

He also committed to responding to citizens' inquiries after their written alerts to carry out inspections in certain businesses where they believe there are illegal activities - for example, non-working air purification plants. 

Popov also said that a distinction should be made between unpleasant odours and the substances that probably cause them.

"I think we should ask the operators themselves, the enterprises, to present to us their own programmes for improvement of their performance, because on that basis we can control them much more easily. The other thing we will do is to send experts to Ruse so that they can make detailed analyses of all the problems raised at the meeting," the minister said.