site.btaItalian Waste Found at Bulgarian Port Is Not Hazardous or Toxic - Prosecutors

January 20 (BTA) - Italian waste which was found to sit
 unlawfully at the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Bourgas, is not
hazardous or toxic, the prosecution service said at a special
news briefing Monday. The prosecution opened a probe after 20
containers with waste from Italy was found at Bourgas Port and
it turned out it had been sitting there since the beginning of
September 2019.

News of waste found at various sites across the country has been
 coming virtually every day. Because of the lack of information
in some cases and the odd circumstances about the way waste is
stored, paired with endemic air pollution, have rise of
wide-spread suspicions that waste, possibly hazardous, is being
incinerated in Bulgaria in violation of the rules. This has
prompted checks by the compent authorities, including the
prosecution service.

The leader of the Bourgas District Prosecution Office, Georgi
Chinev, said that the sender of the waste in the Bourgas case,
the Italian company Dentice Pantaleone, and the receiver,
Blatsion OOD, are the same who sent and received waste at Varna
Port.

Chinev said, however, that what was found in the countainers did
 not match the documents of the waste shipment. The containers
contained textiles, paper and metal while the documents were for
 plastics and rubber.
The waste was meant to be taken to a plant in Pleven, said
Chinev.

The containers with the waste were supposed to be at the port
for 90 days from September 5.

The prosecution service is to do more tests on the waste to
stablish the exact content. They said "they are ready to seek
assistance from international police services to investigate the
 waste shipment".  

The manager of waste buyer Blatsion, Macedonian national Goran
Angelov, told the Macedonian news agency MIA that the containers
 with waste were bound for the Bobov Dol coal-fuelled power
plant for incineration but never went there because in the
meantime the power plant's licence for waste incineration
expired. Angelov also said that Bulgaria does not have a ban on
the import of scrap wood, textiles and glass.

Last Saturday,  Environment Minister Emil Dimitrov officially
said that a Ministry check found that the Bobov Dol power plant
has not been burning hazardous waste.

Greenpeace' Meglena Antonova is widely quoted by media outlets
as saysing that the Bobov Dol power plant is not designed to
burn waste. LN/NV

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