site.btaFirst Containers of Waste from Italy to Be Re-exported Next Week - Environment Minister

Varna, on the Black Sea, February 2 (BTA) - The first 28 containers of a waste shipment from Italy, detected at the Port of Varna-West, will be re-exported next week for the consignor's account, Bulgarian Environment and Water Minister Emil Dimitrov said here on Sunday.

A couple of weeks ago, acting Varna Regional Prosecutor Vladislava Panayotova said that her prosecution office had instituted pre-trial proceedings over 127 containers of waste from Italy found at the Port of Varna-West. The containers had arrived on October 9, 2019, and waste they carried was visibly different from what was declared in the import documents. The shipment was left at the port for 90-day temporary storage. Shortly later, prosecutors launched a probe after 20 containers of waste from Italy were found at the port of Bourgas, and it turned out it had been there since early September 2019.

Media reports about suspicious waste deliveries from Italy have been snowballing in recent weeks. They were triggered by the interception by Italian Carabinieri on December 11, 2019 of an 815-tonne undocumented waste shipment near Milan, loaded into 17 railcars and presumably destined for unlawful destruction or landfilling in Bulgaria.

The lack of information in some cases and the odd circumstances about the way waste is stored, paired with endemic air pollution, have given rise of widespread suspicions that waste, possibly hazardous, is being incinerated in Bulgaria in violation of the rules. This has prompted checks by the competent authorities, including the prosecution service.

Dimitrov pointed out on Sunday that waste brokers will be subjected to "drastic" restrictions. All sea ports and railway border crossings will be closed to such shipments, so that illicit imports could be turned back right at the border and whatever enters the country could be controlled. The plans is to incinerate 50 per cent locally general waste and to fix an import quota only after this target has been met.

Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev said, for his part, that a very serious effort is being made to stem illicit waste imports. "We will do everything possible to demonstrate that the State is doing its job and to end this process," Geshev said, adding that the waste in Varna is destined for incineration in a thermal power plant which he declined to name. MY/LG