Bulgarians Blockade Road to Protest Proposed Biomass Incinerator

- Sep­tem­ber 22, 2014, Novinite.com

Res­i­dents of the south­ern Bul­gar­i­an city of Smolyan have staged a brief road block to oppose plans to build a bio­mass-fired ther­mal pow­er plant.

Res­i­dents of the Usto­vo dis­trict of Smolyan blocked traf­fic along the Smolyan – Madan road for some 10 min­utes on Mon­day, accord­ing to reports of the Bul­gar­i­an Tele­graph Agency and Cap­i­tal Daily.

The pro­test­ers demand a clar­i­fi­ca­tion by the munic­i­pal­i­ty and the respec­tive com­pe­tent author­i­ties on the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the project and the legal­i­ty of the per­mits issued so far.

Niko­lay Mele­mov, May­or of Smolyan, announced Mon­day that the per­mit for the design­ing of the site had been issued by the Smolyan Munic­i­pal­i­ty in 2011 and the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Assess­ment (EIA) of the plant had been approved after that.

He vowed to review the paper­work sur­round­ing the project and to appeal the EIA in the case of detect­ing irregularities.