The Naples waste management crisis was a series of events surrounding the lack of waste collection in the city of Naples that peaked in the summer of 2008, but it is currently resolved.
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Since the mid-1990s, Naples and the Campania region has suffered from the dumping of municipal solid waste into overfilled landfills. Beginning on December 21, 2007, the municipal workers refused to pick up any further material; as a result, the waste had begun to appear as regular fixtures on the streets of Naples, posing severe health risks to the metropolitan population. On December 31, the government closed one of two major dumps near the city at the request of the city's residents.
Reports during the summer of 2008 stated that the problem was caused at least in part by the Camorra, a powerful local mafia based in Campania, who had created a lucrative business in the municipal waste disposal business. Heavy metals, industrial waste and chemicals and household waste are frequently mixed together, dumped near roads and burnt to avoid detection, leading to severe soil and air pollution.[1]
In January 2008 Romano Prodi’s government announced plans for the solution of the crisis including the building of three new incinerators. Prodi appointed a former national police chief as waste commissioner and the army was called in to bulldoze the waste from the streets of Caserta while protesters clashed with police in central Naples. But no real progress had been made by May of that year, when Prodi's government was defeated in the general election. At that time over 200000 tonnes of waste still remained on the streets.
The newly elected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi took immediate action, and held his first cabinet meeting in Naples.[2] He then appointed a new waste commissioner, Guido Bertolaso (then the head of the Civil Protection Department). Bertolaso faced similar protests from the residents of Naples, but during June and July 2008 he dealt with the problem. He opened new landfill sites and an incinerator. In addition he sent 700 tons of rubbish a day to incinerators in Hamburg, Germany, while new incinerators should be built locally.[3] By the end of July, Berlusconi declared that the emergency was closed.[4] By September the rubbish had gone from the streets of Naples,[5]
In March 2009, waste commissioner Bertolaso was transferred to Rome, to deal with a fresh high-profile problem even though great amounts of garbage were still stocked in temporary sites awaiting to be disposed. Likewise, in many municipalities on Naples' periphery there is still a garbage problem. Though Berlusconi's actions have cleaned up the city of Naples, one account states that as of September 2009, "the highways and byways of the rural south remain festering dumping grounds."[6]
Newsweek reported that in October 2010, riots near Terzigno halted garbage collection again in Naples, leading to "overflowing bins and renewed international attention", and "new calls for [Berlusconi's] resignation and allegations that his government is in bed with the mob". The riots occurred after the government announced another 3-million-metric-ton landfill would be constructed within Vesuvius National Park; residents, already upset by toxic waste levels at a nearby landfill, were said to believe that much of the garbage going into the new landfill would be "illegally imported by the Camorra" and would be similarly uncontrolled.[7]
The newly elected mayor of Naples Luigi de Magistris faced the waste management issue from the early days of his mandate. As a result of his efforts, in the period between June and November 2011 the quantity of uncollected garbage in the streets lowered from 2500 tons to zero. A plan of differentiated waste collection has been implemented, and reached levels of 70% over the 300.000 inhabitants involved. Since a bid for the construction of a incinerator facility has gone deserted, this kind of approach has been discarded, together with the construction of new landfills, and garbage transfer to the Netherlands by boat was preferred.[8]