NEMUS takes part in the third cycle of River Basin Management Plans in Bulgaria

NEMUS has just won yet another international tender promoted by the World Bank and is about to start its first project in Bulgaria.

The project aims to update the data on the national groundwater – which will be done by the third time, as requested by the Water Framework Directive (WFD -Directive 2000/60/CE) to all Member States of the EU.

In Bulgaria, the so called “first cycle” of characterization and planning of the water management (both surface water and groundwater), as demanded by the WFD happened from 2009 to 2015 and the second cycle from 2016 to 2021. Nemus will now take part in the third cycle (2022-2027), specifically studying the national groundwaters and focusing on the ones that were classified in “poor status” (qualitative and/or quantitative) or that were identified at risk of not attaining the “good status”. The objective of the service is to perform a new evaluation of both the chemical status and quantitative status of these waters.

Bulgaria is divided into four hydrographical regions: Black Sea Basin, Danube Basin, East Aegean Basin and West Aegean Basin; these last three regions are international basins since they are shared with Greece and Turkey to the South, Romania to the North, and Serbia and North Macedonia to the West. The country is limited by the Black Sea to the East.

Currently, Bulgaria has 169 delimited groundwater bodies, 93 of which are classified has being in a poor status (63) or at risk of not achieving a good status (30).

To update the classification of Bulgaria’s groundwaters, Nemus will observe the WFD mandatory guidelines and also the ones contained in the Directive related to groundwater protection from pollution and deterioration (Directive 2006/118/CE); Also, new methodologies developed by the Bulgarian authorities will be applied, in regard to groundwater bodies delimitation, background and base values, pressures revaluation and status reclassification.

The project is now walking its first steps and soon the stakeholders and relevant entities will gather for the presentation of an inception report, aiming to discuss and validate the methodologies that will be used and the expected results for each of the four hydrographical regions.