Bulgaria Needs BGN 24 B for Water Supply&Sewerage Network Reconstruction

Bulgaria needs BGN 12-24 B to reconstruct its water supply and sewerage infrastructure, according to Rumen Arsov from the Hydro-technical Faculty of the University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy (UACEG).

In a Monday interview for the morning broadcast of Bulgaria On Air TV, he explained that climate change had a global impact, adding that countries across the world were taking two types of precautionary measures, including soft measures (organizational) and hard measures (construction).

"The infrastructure which was replaced over the past 20+ years needs reconstruction. This takes time and a huge amount of financial resources and the state cannot afford it. It only makes partial allocations," Arsov stated, as cited by money.bg.

"We rely on EU funding. Even if Bulgaria utilizes the entire amount of the funding, which will be a miraculous turn of events, the country will solve no more than 30% of these problems. However, there has been an EU funds freeze and Bulgaria is implementing the projects with limited amounts of public funding," he stated.

Arsov said that the recent rainfall amounts were not unusual and suggested that the flooding registered in different parts of the country was due to human error.

The expert noted that the water cycle, which included rain, had been influenced by the increase in solar radiation by 0.4 points over the past 150 years and the fact that the temperature had gone up by 0.6 degrees since the middle of the 19th century.