site.btaBulgaria Has 884 Dams in Need of Fixing, 450 Require Urgent Repairs

Lovech, Northern Bulgaria, July 17 (BTA) - A total of 884 dams in Bulgaria need to be repaired, and 450 of these require urgent repairs. This transpired at an extended sitting of the staff for implementing the Disaster Protection Plan here on Tuesday.

The head of the State Agency for Metrological and Technical Supervision, Peter Goranski, specified that this does not mean that the dams are dangerous but that there are compromised installations which cannot function in case of a tidal wave. Therefore, these dams have to be repaired as quickly as possible, he added. The newly established State Consolidation Company has 500 million leva with which it has to organize the examination, photographing and repairs of these dams, he noted.

Municipalities have until October 3 to submit a statement for the transfer of the ownership over the dams to the State Consolidation Company. To present, this has been done up to 60-70 per cent.

Goranski said that a classification of all dams in Bulgaria will be done according to their capacity and risk. They number 6,800 but once the ongoing checks are completed, their number is expected to increase to 7,000, because there still are small water reservoirs that have not been registered. The lack of documentation required for their registration causes problems, he explained.