Bulgarian highway project could be a road to environmental disaster, 3 June 2023

...[N]ow people living in the region near the Kresna Gorge fear their livelihoods and lives could be threatened as a long-delayed highway project in Bulgaria nears completion, despite years of complaints that the new road will damage one of the country's most pristine areas of natural beauty.

The last section of the Struma Highway - named after the river that shaped the Kresna Gorge - is just over 23 kilometers in length but is by far the most controversial part of the 173-kilometer road that, when completed, will stretch from the Bulgarian capital of Sofia to Kulata on the country's border with Greece. The road is a key link in a grander EU highway chain to improve the continent's transport network.

The 18-kilometer Kresna Gorge "boasts more than 3,500 species of flora and fauna, including snakes, turtles, and bats found nowhere else in Europe," including golden eagles, griffon vultures, brown bears, and wolves, according to the Bulgarian branch of Friends of the Earth Europe, a leading environmental activist NGO, which has fought for years against the Sturma Highway project.

They and other eco-activists point to the fact that the gorge has been designated as part of Natura 2000, a network of protected areas covering Europe's most valuable and threatened species and habitats.

That designation obligates Sofia to do its utmost to protect the habitat in the gorge, activists stress...

To appease the environmental activists, Sofia has offered what it billed as a compromise. Instead of dissecting the gorge with a two-way highway, it proposes expanding an existing roadway there - the E-79 - to handle traffic heading southward and build a new extension around the gorge to accommodate traffic heading north.

However, residents in the Kresna Gorge region and eco-activists aren't thrilled with that proposal either, instead demanding the road entirely circumvent the gorge to the east, the so-called eastern option...

Speaking to RFE/RL's Bulgarian Service, Ivanov, who lives in the area, said that under the government's compromise, anyone wishing to travel north, including to Blagoevgrad, the regional hub, would need to take a circuitous detour.

That would not only complicate transport, including bus routes, but effectively cut off farmers from their land, as well as impacting access for rafting and whitewater tourism, Ivanov claims. "Therefore, we demand that...instead of having only one direction to the north, lanes should be built in the southern direction as well. And that way, the gorge will remain an alternative local road," Ivanov said.

Despite breaking ground on the road to the north of the gorge, Bulgarian officials, including Shishkov, insist that a final decision has not been reached on the route of the final sector of highway. He says any further delays could drag the project on for years...