Seite - 1437 - in Book of Full Papers - Symposium Hydro Engineering

maintenance. The operation of the dam and its structures ends with conservation or removal of the dam, and such activity also is subject to the development and implementation of special and very particular design solutions. There are almost 6000 water objects in Bulgaria subject to water right permits. More than 2000 of them are small dams according to the definition of ICOLD [1]. They were built predominantly in the 1960s and 1970s serving most of all agricultural purposes – local irrigation and stock farming. With very few exceptions as parts of some industrial facilities, these are embankment dams. In the decades after the Second World War, large profiled state design and construction enterprises with their local branches were engaged in the design and construction of such dams on the whole territory of Bulgaria for enabling the development of local agriculture besides the large irrigation systems. At the same time, the related national codes and regulations for preliminary surveys, design and maintenance of dams were developed with respect to the obtained experience and the current best practices not only of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries [2] but also of the world leading countries in the field of Dam Engineering. After the fundamental political change in 1989 in Bulgaria, all cooperative farms and so-called agricultural-industrial complexes were liquidated. The related administrative procedures were forced in time in connection with the restitution of the land property nationalized after the Second World War. In the frame of this process, many small dams owned previously by cooperative farms and societies were sold, however, without clear definition of the deal conditions as this will be explained in more detail further below. All responsibilities for the further operation of all remaining small dams were administratively transferred to the local municipalities. On the one hand, they still have neither the qualified personnel nor the financial resources to perform proper maintenance of the dams and their facilities. On the other hand, due to the collapse of national agriculture and the steady evacuation of the land population, there is currently in fact almost no need for the water from all these small reservoirs. As a result, the technical maintenance of the small dams as an inherent operation component was disregarded for many years with all related consequences. The further development up to now is characterized by two other features, too. The municipalities owning small dams have always tried to find mechanisms for financing the technical maintenance of the facilities. Some solutions were found, however, they caused some other problems which will be addressed further below. Simultaneously, there are continuous and intensive attempts for corresponding development of the complicated legislative environment in the field which should enable general solutions of the most important problems related to the dam safety above all. The present work constitutes an attempt for a short analysis of the current status of the small dams in Bulgaria considering its more recent historical development as well as the wide variety of related problems currently. This is not the first study of these problems, moreover since they become more topical with the time. Here in this connection, the works [3,4] on general and particular issues of the small dams should be mentioned as examples. Of course, a complete study would require large amount of reliable input data, its statistical processing 1437