The Caivano dump, near Naples.
Posted on 01/15/2008 10:16:42 AM PST by mojito
AT night the mice and the dogs are masters. The garbage is piled up to the second floor of the houses, and in the darkness it comes alive. Plastic bags and sacks vibrate, emitting the sounds of things pulled apart, scavenged.
By day the rats disappear, the dogs are quiet, and men, women, children reappear. The traffic, normally chaotic, here and there is stopped by overturned garbage cans and the trash that blocks the streets. The garbage — thousands of tons of it — has gone uncollected for three weeks, because all the available landfills are full. The evil odor of decomposition and burning waste moves down the hills of refuse and slides along the streets, enters shops, doorways, houses.
But this city, a million people, keeps going. What makes people angry is not the inhabitants of the suburb of Pianura heatedly protesting the reopening of a garbage dump near their houses, but the more general acquiescence of Naples, the habit of surviving in inefficiency and disorder. Crime, in this city, has become a destiny; it has the power of things that are well known but about which there is nothing to be done.
The garbage in the streets is nothing new; it has decades of history behind it. That organized crime controls the garbage industry and runs a staggering number of illegal dumps, everyone has known for a long time. That a wide range of poisons are buried in Campania, the region around Naples, and that this multiplies by the hundreds the usual risks that human life is exposed to, is known to both ordinary citizens and government officials. That illegality flourishes, and very profitably, under the umbrella of the law thanks to the intervention of politicians of every stripe is not even arguable — it’s a fact....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The Caivano dump, near Naples.
Those are carbon credits, aren’t they?
The mafia used to control garbage collection in NYC. In the late 90s, the mafia’s control was finally ended following a successful undercover operation by a NYPD detective and a legitimate hauler. The mafia used to extract a 500% to 1,000% markup on garbage collection fees. The breakup of the mafia’s control on garbage collection was a huge cost reduction almost every business in NYC. Politicians who challenged the mafia’s grip on the garbage business were met with crippling strikes. NYC should build a monument to the brave detective and hauler who risked their lives to collect the evidence needed to break the mafia’s control.
And a monument to Giuliani who absolutely hammered the Mob as US Attorney.
We live near ground central for the protests. The reports about the garbage are, if anything, not descriptive enough. We were blocked from the main road from my house to my workplace for about 9 days by the protests. Last week, they blocked my other way out of the housing area. Just as I decided to move the family, the police came in and cleared the blockade. Now, it is hit and run protests that block us from getting around to the various areas that I have to go for my job.
Just tonight, I followed one of the “Blue Light Vehicles” (generally, a NATO flag officer) in order to make it around the protests. Talk about interesting driving. You have never lived until you have driven in Naples!
Gee, when do we get to have socialist paradise in our country, too?
Calling AlGore!....Naples has a fever!
because all the available landfills are full.
one word: Vesuvius
WOW... I did not know this.
I heard that the North of Italy is much cleaner.
Got to make the drive a couple times last year. Naples should be the jewl of Europe, amazing city sans-trash and Camora grafiti.
North Mexico is cleaner.
Are many businesses and restaurants closed?
Saw this photo on Yahoo today...
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