THE excessive levels of sulphur dioxide emissions in Stara Zagora this past week stirred controversy around the Maritsa Iztok power plants and the Briquel briquette factory. 
On July 18, the municipal council of Stara Zagora demanded that a Government commission present a report on the source and the reasons for the repeated noxious emissions within 30 days.
The commission should also include representatives of the Defence Ministry, because residents of Stara Zagora were unsure whether the toxic emissions were coming from the Zmeyovo military range near the city.
In the same period, the heads of Maritsa Iztok and Briquel should present an investment plan in ecological programmes and the city's mayor Evgenii Zhelev should order an assessment of the effects on the environment of the Zmeyovo military range.
According to Ministry of Environment and Waters officials, however, previous investigations in June and September 2004, when Stara Zagora had pollution problems, high levels of sulphur dioxide, along with emissions from the Maritsa Iztok and Briquel and climatic preconditions such as low air pressure, wind and inversion caused the problem.
In an official press release, the ministry said that six points in different places in the Maritsa Iztok complex monitor the concentration of ambient air pollutants including dust, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen oxide and ozone.
In order to identify the cause of the high concentration of sulphur dioxide in the area, the Regional Environment and Waters Inspectorate in Stara Zagora had conducted checks of operating facilities in Maritsa Iztok and had found that the high concentrations were caused by the simultaneous work of the Briquel factory operating at full capacity, and the Maritsa Iztok 2 and 3 thermal power plants, operating at 56 per cent and 75 per cent of their capacity, respectively.
"Thus, the work of the three facilities emits about 2160 tons of sulphur dioxide daily," the press release said. 
The press release said that the facilities were informed about the need to reduce their output of the pollutants.
Meanwhile, Stara Zagora residents protested and MPs set up an ad hoc committee to investigate the cases, and two MPs from the European Parliament sent the outgoing ministers of environment and energy a letter expressing their concern at the situation in the city.
In their letter, Elly de Groen-Kouwenhoven and Hiltrud Breyer urged urgent action to prevent consequences from the high  level of pollution.
"In the long term this serious pollution would lead to chronic respiratory conditions, which potentially would harm around 200 000 people living in Stara Zagora and the neighbouring villages," the two MPs said.
"Bearing in mind that this is the second such incident in the past two years, we take this problem very seriously. We urge you to take the necessary measures as soon as possible because the current situation is unacceptable. Nowhere else in Europe have similar power stations caused pollution of such scale."
Meanwhile, Parliament decided to establish a 15-member ad hoc commission in connection with the air pollution in Stara Zagora and briefed it to come up with a solution.