Discontent grows as Bulgaria hit by new water supply crisis

Sofia: New official data suggests that around 260,000 Bulgarians are struggling with basic sanitary needs such as bathing, flushing the toilet and washing clothes due to the country’s ageing water supply system. The crisis is badly affecting 16 cities and more than 200 villages in the country.

One of the worst affected cities is Pleven in the central part of the country, home to 110,000 residents. According to Bulgarian media, households currently have access to water for just two hours and a half hours a day, between 7pm and 9.30pm.

“We’re wasting more than half of the water quantity which enters the system,” engineer Teodora Pakuleva of the Bulgaria Waters Association told Bulgarian National Radio on Wednesday.

“The infrastructure we currently have is over 40 years old. In other words, we have an extremely depreciated network that is already starting to create more problems than we can bear and handle,” Pakuleva added. She said there was an urgent need for alternative water resources and backup connections.

Last week, thousands of people protested in Pleven, a city which was also affected by supply problems last year, and are due to protest again on Sunday.

Bulgarian Minister of Regional Development Ivan Ivanov has announced he is ordering the renovation of the water supply system in Pleven.

“Among the general problems causing the drought crisis are the lack of underground water resources, predominantly in the small towns,” Ivanov said on Wednesday. “Pleven, like nearby towns and villages, is getting water from surrounding rivers.”

Following an emergency meeting in parliament on Thursday, it was announced a national board of experts will be formed within two weeks to tackle the situation.

Ministers said the level of the disruption this year had not yet been as bad as a similar water supply crisis that hit the country last summer.

In May, Iliyana Todorova, director of the Water Management Directorate at the Ministry of Environment and Water, said the supply problems were due to old infrastructure. She said 60 per cent of water destined for homes does not reach them, with some towns experiencing a worse loss.

Earlier this year, agricultural workers and farmers repeatedly voiced their concerns about how irregular water supply had been impacting cultivation and production.

Climate change has been acknowledged as a contributing factor, yet so far this has not been addressed by the authorities.

Despite the ongoing water supply issues, the state says it has invested in improvements to the water supply infrastructure.

According to data issued in May by the Ministry of Environment and Water, between 2007 and 2020 the government pumped 1.84 billion euros into water supply and sewerage improvement projects. In addition, between 2022-2024, the Enterprise for Management of Activities in the Field of Environment (EMAFE) provided 42.9 million euro in financial assistance to municipalities for water supply and sewerage projects.

In August 2024, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office said it suspected fraud was involved in a 2.6 million euro EU-funded project to reconstruct the water supply network in an unnamed municipality. There’s been no public follow-up to the investigation.

Water supply has been an issue in Bulgaria for several years. In 2019 and in early 2020, the industrial town of Pernik near Sofia was hit by severe water shortages after the local Studena dam temporarily dried up.

Allegations of mismanagement of funds led to the arrest of the then-minister of environment and water, Neno Dimov, the first of an acting minister in Bulgaria’s post-Communist history. He was later released on house arrest and the case is still ongoing.

Pernik is among the towns affected by the current crisis, too, with water rationing in place since May.

Neglect over polluted water resources has also been an issue. In April 2022, Ivan Portnih, then mayor of Varna, was accused of not taking action to deal with the repeated pollution of Lake Varna with sewage between 2019 and 2021.