Garbage FLOOD, caused by human !!

Greek officials protest garbage flood from Bulgaria

Fri Nov 2, 1:11 PM ET

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.

"Behind Pollution"

Water Service 'behind pollution'

The service was blamed for a major fish kill

The Water Service in Northern Ireland has caused more than 1,500 pollution incidents in the five years to 2005 - almost one a day.

The figures were revealed under the Freedom of Information Act following a request from BBC Radio Foyle.

The incidents of pollution include a major fish kill on the River Roe near Limavady last July.

However, Jack McFarland, regional manager with the Water Service, said most incidents were of a minor nature.

He said the Water Service was third highest when it came to pollution, with industry second and farming at the top of the list.

"These are figures we are not very proud of," he told the BBC.

"We have hundreds of pumping stations, hundreds of sewerage works. Not everything works exactly to plan, as we would wish. We do have failures and we are not proud of them.

"But in fairness they are not causing any great degree of pollution; it is manageable."

A new water company will be formed in April

The Department of Regional Development confirmed that the Water Service caused 1,527 pollution incidents between 2000 and 2005.

These included waterways being polluted with raw sewage.

The Church Brae Burn near Derry was found to be "grey with fungus" and "septic" for six weeks last summer.

Mr McFarland said in the north-west area over the last five years there were 291 incidents, with only one of those deemed high, 5-6% deemed medium and the others low.

"The impact on the environment from our activities has been very low," he said.

"The quality of our infrastructure in some areas would probably be the major cause.

"Most of our sewerage depends a lot on pumping stations. We have power failures... but they don't last for long.

"But it's long enough for a sump to build up and maybe start to overflow - that in itself will create an incident. We do have pump failure and of course there are times when we do get things wrong ourselves."

Currently the Water Service is not prosecuted over such incidents, but Mr McFarland said Crown immunity would cease after it becomes Northern Ireland Water Ltd in April.