The King of Wine Refuses the Crown and Warns

The traditional wine and wine-makers’ festival, which has been celebrated for years in the village of Rakitnitsa, Stara Zagora region, was accompanied by clearing of forests and council owned lands with construction works for a new waste depot, on 12 of February 2015. For the last six years (since 2009) the locals have been fighting the soulless (and sometimes very incompetent) government machine. The project for a large waste depot, projected to be built unacceptably close to people’s homes and their orchards will pour its wastewaters in the Sazliika River – a protected area, part of the European Natura 2000 network. The proposed depot’s DDP (Detailed Development Plan) does not envisage a proper waste water treatment plant, but rather just a ‘treatment’ process before releasing the wastewaters within the protected area. This is a serious ecological issue, however the overall effects of the proposed depot on the locality’s population, in particular their agricultural activities, the water and air quality as well as their quality of life would be even more serious. For this reason, the village’s population are continuing the fight for their right to clean water and a healthy environment, guaranteed by the Constitution.
During their traditional ‘Trifon Zarezan’ festival, the crowned ‘Wine King’ Penyo Radev refused the crown awarded to him, as a symbolic gesture of warning and protest against the irresponsible behaviour of central and local government towards the local people’s livelihoods, health and life.
During the six-year struggle against the half-baked proposal (financed through European funds), the locals and the initiative committee have acted on all possible fronts. Protests, petitions, court action - they have challenged the Environmental Impact Assessment for the project in the Administrative Court (however the Supreme Administrative Court quashed that decision); they have initiated signature collection for a referendum, they have written to the EU Parliament, the EU Court; they have even managed to take the local committee chairman to court, for inaction. However, despite the unified and tireless position of the Rakitnitsa village occupants against the proposed depot next to their home, the Stara Zagora mayor has remained unwilling to hear the local people’s protests.
The numerous instances of breaching, ignoring or blatant re-interpretation of Bulgarian and European laws accompany the saga with the inadequate council decision in the Stara Zagora region. Similar ill-conceived attitudes and the inappropriate treatment of waste, polluting the environment of many Bulgarian villages, where people are trying to develop agriculture or eco-tourism, is a serious government problem, which periodically unsettles the spirits in the whole country and affects all of us.

Initiative committee members share their outrage not just with the fact that village residents get threatened and blackmailed to terminate their involvement in the protest, but also because the waste treatment alternatives (one of which envisaged a more sensible waste treatment plant instead of the deposition of wastewater on fertile soils) did not get the deserved and necessary attention by decision-making authorities. Similar government irresponsibility (missed deadlines and blatantly illegal activities by the Stara Zagora local government committee) awakens even more outrage, especially given that 250 ha of forest (gifted to the municipality by the Ministry for Agriculture and Food) has been cleared and uprooted without a trace, to make space for waste storage! The locals are discussing future legal action and protests, if the voice of reason is not heard.