This MATRA project is a tool helping the Bulgarian water and sanitation sector to become a part of the future European community. The project’s main outcome will be the formulation of a model for sustainable water and waste management in the rural municipalities in Bulgaria. The project focuses on the environmental and the occupational aspects of the problem, as well as on the gender issues. It will test the practical options in pilot projects and will encourage the local communities to carry the strategy forward and to promote environmental entrepreneurship in their own areas. It will develop a decentralized, cost-effective and participatory decision making processes. It will communicate with legislators in the national ministries and be in conformity with national policy. It will promote the policy plans of the municipalities at multi-stakeholder workshops. Finally, the developed model will be widely promoted and used by other Bulgarian local authorities. The project includes a sampling program (chemical and microbiological) for assessing the quality of the water from various sources used currently in the pilot rural areas. A part of the analytical tests will be carried out in German laboratories and another part in Bulgarian ones. The goal of the sampling program is to identify the health risk which the current practice of using water from local sources (separately from the central water supply system) may impose to the population in the pilot areas.