Sofia's cemeteries to reach full capacity in three months

   Sofia's cemeteries will run out of free space within three months, Ventsislav Grigorov from the

Sofia city hall told private broadcaster bTV on August 17 2009. There were more then 44 cemeteries in

and around Sofia, of which the biggest eight were managed by municipal company Grobishni Parkove, he said.

Of all the big Sofia cemeteries, there was any room left only in the Bakurena Fabrika borough cemetery, he said. The other cemeteries continued performing burials, but only of people who were buried in old family graves.

The answer to this problem was the opening of new cemeteries, which was a protracted and complicated procedure and involved changing the status of agricultural lands. The terrain also had to be carefully picked so that there was no aquifer rocks with underground water running below the chosen spot.

Unless something was done quickly, Sofia could face a crisis more terrible than its perennial refuse problem, he said. "You can send refuse to other places but you cannot do it with bodies," Grigorov said.

The main reason for the shortage of graves was the fact that Sofia's population has grown considerably over the previous five years. In total, more two million people have been buried in cemeteries in and around Sofia. More than one million of them have been buried in the city's central cemeteries.

       Source: sofiaecho.com