Photo: chernomore.info

Sveti Vlas, on the Black Sea, June 22 (BTA) - For yet another
year, the Sveti Vlas New Beach has been awarded the prestigious
Blue Flag Award. The beach has been receiving the certificate 
since 2014, the Bulgarian Blue Flag Movement website says.

The beach is located in the town of Sveti Vlas, flanking the
marina. It is some 800 m long and nearly 80 m wide, touching on
rocky formations at the quay.

The beach is cleaned every day. There are also catering
establishments offering food and drinks. The beach offers a
variety of sports attractions: beach ball games, water skiing,
yachting, canoeing, and water motorcycles. Kids can have fun in
a dedicated play area. There are convenient parking lots nearby.
 Not far from Sveti Vlas there are bus stops for the year-round
lines to and from Sofia, Burgas and Sunny Beach.     

The beach concessionaire Georgi Chapkunov told BTA that years
ago all three Sveto Vlas beaches had Blue Flag certificates but
now, for various reasons, only the Sveti Vlas New Beach is
waving the blue flag this summer. In 2018 Beach-Inspector had
ranked it 16th among the 4,000 other beaches, he added.

Underscoring that the Blue Flag is a world standard, Chapkunov
said Bulgarians do not pay much attention to it. However,
foreign tourists are familiar with this standard and look for
it. It attracts tourists who come with their families. It is
particularly important to them to spend their holidays in proven
 environmentally clean surroundings. Chapkunov explained that
"his" beach had met over 30 criteria required to be awarded a
Blue Flag. "We have achieved high quality at a low price,"
Chapkunov declared.      

This year 12 other Bulgarian Black Sea beaches were awarded the
Blue Flag certificate and BTA will run reports on every one of
them: Golden Sands; Sunny Day; Sunny Beach North; Sunny Beach
Central; Sunny Beach South, Nessebur South; Pomorie East;
Sozopol Central; Sozopol Harmanite; Dunes; Dunes South;
Arkutino. Marina Dinevi is the only marina awarded the Blue Flag
 certificate.

Every year, the national panel of the Bulgarian Blue Flag
Movement  considers the applicants for the certificate, which
are then reviewed by an international panel at the Foundation
for Environmental Education, an international organization with
members from over 70 countries. The criteria are stringent, but
not impossible for beaches claiming to offer clean, secure, safe
 and modern services, the representative of the Blue Flag
Programme for Bulgaria, Stanimir Georgiev, told BTA. The
existence of facilities for disabled enabling their access to
the beach is particularly important, he said. Beaches are
awarded the Blue Flag for one season only and apply for the
certificate every year. The European Blue Flag Campaign was
launched in 1987 as a partnership between the Foundation of
Environment Education and the European Commission. The campaign
now covers about 50 countries from Europe, North and South
America, Asia, Africa and Oceania./RY/BR

Source: Sveti Vlas, on the Black Sea