ABSTRACT
In the pre-dawn hours of 8 February 1995 special troops of the Bulgarian Interior Ministry mustered in some fields near the picturesque resort town of SaparevaBania (Figure 15.1). A brigade of mounted police was put on alert in nearby Samokov. Their immediate objective was to break through a two-month-old barricade that local citizens had put across an access road into the Rila Mountains (Plate 15.1). This was deemed necessary in order to guarantee access to construction crews that were to construct a pipeline to divert water from the Skakavitsa River to the Djerman River, a distance of some 3 kilometres, and thence into the system that supplies the capital city, Sofia, with drinking water. Sofia, a city of 1.2 million people, was at that time experiencing a serious drinking water shortage resulting in an extensive water-rationing programme and significant impacts on regional industry and agriculture. Public health authorities also expressed concern about the effects of the lack of potable water on sanitation, and rumours about cholera and dysentery in various parts of the city were rampant (e.g., Demokratsiya 18 January 1995). Members of the National Parliament had even suggested that a large proportion of the population should be evacuated from the capital during the summer of 1995 if water supplies did not improve (BTA Daily Bulletin 2 February 1995). Notwithstanding these problems in the capital, those opposing the construction of Djerman-Skakavitsa demanded that their own long-standing water shortages be addressed. Indeed, a government decree (Decree No. 137) of late 1990 had already explicitly declared that no water was to be taken from the Rila communities until their own security of supply had been assured (Zemedelsko Zname December 1994, no. 224).
