A total of 130,000 tons of garbage collected from the capital Sofia have been deposited at the waste depot in the town of Silistra, located on the Danube River in Northeastern Bulgaria.

The municipality of Silistra agreed to lend a hand to the capital in its attempt to deal with its ongoing garbage issues by storing and processing a total of 180,000 tons of waste.

A day earlier it Sofia municipality announced it has started the implementation of a project for the building of a waste processing plant, worth EUR 185 M.

The funding will be released by the European Investment Bank and the Environment Operative Programme.

The company to execute the project will be known by the end of the year after the invitation of a tender.

Finding a solution to Sofia ongoing waste problems was a politically sensitive issue in the months before the parliamentary elections in the summer, which mayor of the capital Boyko Borisov won by a large margin.

The previous Socialist-led government officially declared a state of emergency in Sofia at the beginning of April over lack of adequate waste removal, saying that the garbage problems threatened national security and citing health and environmental concerns.

The then opposition party of Sofia mayor GERB, which won the elections by a large margin and formed a government, dismissed this as pre-election muscle pumping.

The residents close to Sofia operational landfill at Suhodol have repeatedly staged rallies, demanding the closing of the dumpsite on the western outskirts of Bulgaria's capital, citing health and environmental concerns.

The dumpsite was reopened at the beginning of December 2007 after the environment ministry backed the controversial option to prevent a looming garbage crisis in the capital.

Suhodol residents forced Sofia authorities to introduce crisis management in July 2005 after blockading the landfill. The protests left the streets in the capital littered with garbage, posing a serious risk to human health and the environment.

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