Mayors whose refuse sites will have to be shut down by July 16, for not meeting the European Union’s environmental criteria, are preparing for a "trench war" with the state. At the same time mayors whose refuse sites are in order but will be forced to accept rubbish from their troubled colleagues are ready to resist. The former have not even made calculations about the cost of transporting their refuse to new sites while the latter want to charge a fee for every ton of refuse they agree to store.

The Environment Ministry claims that the July 16 deadline cannot be renegotiated with the European Commission, or deferred, and that failing to abide by it will incur sanctions for Bulgaria in September. The Ministry suspects that the turmoil is caused mainly by mayors of the biggest party in opposition, Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (abbreviated as GERB in Bulgarian). The Ministry also says that municipalities should ask the Finance Ministry for subsidies and zero-interest loans to cover the additional costs of transporting refuse.

By July 16, a total of 203 refuse sites throughout Bulgaria will have to be shut down even though half the newly planned regional refuse sites are still under construction. And in some places construction works have not even started yet. This means that after July 16 about 120 municipalities will be left without places to store their rubbish. To solve the problem, the Ministry has proposed several options to municipalities. According to the Ministry’s preliminary calculations, transporting refuse will cost municipalities no more than an additional three million leva in 2009. Additional transport costs in 2010, when all refuse sites are supposed to be completed, should be roughly the same, the Ministry’s calculations say.

According to Ginka Chavdarova, chairperson of the National Association of Municipalities, however, these projections were several times lower than the actual cost of such an operation.