site.btaWater Supply Rationed in 51 Municipalities Countrywide, Regional Development Minister Says

Out of a total of 265 municipalities in Bulgaria, water supply is rationed in 51, belonging to 14 administrative regions, caretaker Bulgarian Regional Development and Public Works Minister Violeta Koritarova said, addressing Parliament during Question Time on Friday.

Her Ministry has found that some 111,000 people are affected by disrupted water supply: over 24,000 in seven towns and 87,180 in another 172 settlements, the Minister said.

On a weekly basis, the Ministry receives information from the water and sewerage operators about settlements where water supply for household consumption, Koritarova reported.

Options to address the issue in the short term, falling within the timeframe of the caretaker cabinet, include, according to the measures suggested by water and sewerage operators: prospecting and building new water sources for reserve storage and water-supply systems of neighbouring settlements to be used when necessary. "The most important measure is building dams," the Minister said. Other measures are remodelling and rehabilitating pressure-head reservoirs, water withdrawal facilities, and remodelling and rehabilitating feeder water conduits. 

The Ministry's position is that water resource management should be a top priority for all institutions. "We can't cope with the problem on our own, enormous resources need to be invested in the water and sewerage infrastructure," Koritarova stressed, adding that this applies to feeder infrastructure as well as the construction of dams and state-of-the-art irrigation systems. She recalled that only two dams have been built over the last 30 years.