Trash City

Meanwhile, local residents are protesting against Prodi's plans to reopen an old dump at Pianura, on the outskirts of Naples. The site, in the suburb of Pozzuoli, is tucked between the World Wildlife Fund's Astroni Crater reserve and development property for a luxury golf resort. It was closed 12 years ago at the EU's urging after health officials found high levels of toxic substances in the air and water and above-average death and cancer rates for those living in the area. In 2004, when authorities tried to reopen the site, the British medical journal Lancet issued a health report calling the area a "triangle of death." The government then deemed the site unusable and covered the dump with a picturesque hill, under which few people venture to guess what is actually buried. So sure were residents that this toxic landfill would never be reopened that many locals have invested millions of euros over the last three years in a development plan to build luxury hotels and an 18-hole golf course next to the covered fill.

The Pianura protesters have stopped the police from accessing the landfill by using everything from tree stumps and Molotov cocktails to fend them off. At one point protesters commandeered four city buses and torched them on the streets nearby. Days later protesters hung dummies representing Prodi, Naples Mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino and the region's president, Antonio Bassolino, from lampposts. A local priest, Father Giuseppe Cipolletta, set up a plastic altar and served Sunday mass to the protesters so they wouldn't have to leave their posts. "You won't solve the problem by reopening another dump," he preached during this sermon. "It will just fill up, so what's the solution?" Last week police finally gave up and moved aside to allow the angry citizens to occupy the former dump.

In fact, opening more dumps just creates more opportunities for what Italy's environment minister, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, calls the "eco-mafia." Scanio believes that the real solution is for the EU instead to offer grants and subsidies to build recycling plants and high-tech disposal facilities. "The eco-mafias are behind the fires that are burning Naples and that are set to burn the accumulated trash," he said. "In the chaos that is created, the Camorra is always the victor."

For Italy's political elite, the concerns are not the view from Naples but how the rest of the continent perceives the nation. "The government cannot tolerate that the problem remains unsolved," Prodi said during a weekend visit to Malta. "This emergency is a shame for the whole of Italy." But for the Neapolitans, who still can't even take out their Christmas holiday trash, a bad image is the least of their problems.

© 2008