Our nine months in Rome have dulled our senses. We no longer leap like frightened rabbits when cars target us like cruise missiles. The noise, excruciating at first, has faded to a dull roar. What we have utterly failed to adapt to is the garbage. It is everywhere — on the sidewalks, on the streets, piled high around municipal garbage bins, scattered like dead leaves through parks and gardens. When Romans leave their tidy homes, their personalities instantly change and the streets are treated as convenient, open-air sewers.
But at least Rome is not Naples, where the Italian army has been called out to clear the garbage-choked streets.
Naples has always been a chaotic, unruly, sometimes ungovernable, city. The latest garbage crisis started just before Christmas, when — predictably — regional dumps overflowed and had to be closed. Garbage hasn't been collected from the streets since Dec. 31. Great piles of it block streets and entrances to buildings. One newspaper said some piles reached as high as the third floor of apartment buildings.
Some residents have set the piles ablaze. The Naples fire brigade has had to put out dozens of fires. With nowhere to put the trash, the city tried to reopen the Pianura neighbourhood dump, which had been declared a health risk and closed 11 years earlier. To prevent the dump from reopening, residents felled trees and poured oil onto the streets, and set buses on fire. The ever dramatic Neapolitans hung effigies of local officials, including Naples mayor Rosa Iervolino, from trees and lampposts. The military was ordered to clear the garbage that was blocking the entries to the city's schools.
Italy's environment minister, Alfonso Scanio, blamed the local Mafia, known as the Camorra, for the garbage mess. He's probably right. The Camorra controls the garbage haulage and dumps. The Wall Street Journal reported that about half of the €1-billion spent on garbage removal a year in the Naples region ends up in the pockets of the Camorra. It is, apparently, not in the Mafia's interest to encourage the construction of new dumps. Scarcity raises prices. The current emergency will play perfectly into the Mafia's hands, prosecutors say, because it will encourage the city to sign lucrative haulage and disposal contracts quickly.
Naples and the area around it get swamped with garbage all the time. The army was called out last May to clear trash in the streets that presented a health hazard and kept some schools closed. New dumps are needed; incinerators too (Naples had planned to build six incinerators, but only one is operating). In Naples, two things are certain. The first is that the next garbage disaster will happen soon. The second is that nothing will be done about it. We remind you that Italy is an otherwise prosperous G-7 country.
