SALONIKA (AFP) — Officials and ecologists in northern Greece were in an uproar after garbage from neighbouring Bulgaria flooded into protected wetlands following heavy rains, a local activist said Friday.
"Most of the discarded plastic containers have Bulgarian labels," said Stavros Daglis, head of the Ecological Action Group in the city of Drama.
In a letter sent Monday to the Bulgarian consul in the city of Salonika, the mayor of Kato Nevrokopi said "massive" quantities of waste from households and industry were swept into the Nestos River on October 22 and 23.
"This is the fourth time this has happened ... and we just completed a costly cleanup from waste coming from your country last year," Mayor Vassilis Yiannopoulos wrote.
"Obviously the garbage was swept from disorganised (Bulgarian) landfills after the heavy rains that fell recently," he said.
The Nestos River delta and adjoining lagoons, which extend over a 21,930-hectare (54,190-acre) area, are protected wetlands.
"We cannot have the Nestos turning into a garbage dump every time it rains," Drama prefect Costas Evmoiridis told the regional Makedonia daily.
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