Construction of Waste Water Treatment Plants Launched in Lovech, Sevlievo

Environment and Water Minister Djevdet Chakurov attended on Tuesday the ground-breaking ceremonies for the construction of waste water treatment plants in Lovech and Sevlievo (both in Northern Bulgaria), BTA reported.

The Lovech plant is worth 9.443 million euro and the Sevlievo plant 13,987,623 euro.

Seventy five per cent of the funds have been provided under the ISPA program, while the remaining 25 per cent have been supplied by the Bulgarian Government, Chakurov said.

The waste water treatment plant in Lovech will serve the population of Lovech of about 51,400 by 2022. The protection of the Osum river and the Danube river waters will be improved. The Sevlievo plant will serve about 53,000 and will contribute to the cleanness of the Rossitsa river as one of the Danube's tributaries.

Turkish-German consortium Sistem Yapi Insaat ve Ticaret will construct the plant in Lovech, and Austrian Alpine Bau the one in Sevlievo. The construction supervision over both projects is carried out by French-Bulgarian consortium Safege-Aquains. Both plants should be ready in 2009.

Besides in Lovech and Sevlievo, waste water treatment plants are also constructed in Montana, Turgovishte and Popovo (all in Northern Bulgaria) and in Meden Roudnik borough of Bourgas (on Black Sea). The Environment Ministry has reached an agreement with the European Commission not to suspend the ISPA money for these projects, the Environment Minister said.

Over 70 municipalities across the country of a population of over 10,000 each have to submit by end-July to the Environment and Water Ministry their projects for construction of waste water treatment plants, Chakurov also said.

According to him, the financial resource for investment under the various European programmes stands at 1,400 million euro.

Over 360 projects of municipalities for funding projects under the Waters and Waste sections of the Environment Operational Program have been submitted to the Environment Ministry and every fifth municipality is ready to launch a public procurement procedure for its project, the minister also said.