Chiaiano, autocompattaore giallo, emergenza rifiuti, Napoli, Italia, discarica di Chiaiano, rifiuti radioattivi, SIET

The bluff of the [un]solved waste emergency
translation of the Italian version published by Carta on 26 March 2010 and by Il Manifesto on 29 March 2010.

joined byline Cecilia Anesi and Giulio Rubino

The scandals that have recently put under spotlights the Italian Chief of Civil Protection Guido Bertolaso and the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi are for many not a surprise. Especially in Campania, southern Italy, where the citizenship has looked with astonishment at the controversial measures taken by the two in order to solve Campania’s last waste emergency.
The controversial measures, such as the opening of new landfills in National Natural Parks, are to be added to previously unsolved situations of “temporary” waste-stocking areas that keep blazing regularly and mysteriously and a incinerator plant that has yet not started fully functioning. Some of the landfills wanted by Bertolaso were even built on top of old illegal dumping sites. An environmental reclaim was never undertaken and furthermore composting plants were never inaugurated. Dialogue with citizenship, increasingly worried about the growth of cancer mortality, was avoided.
The confusion upon the very date of the very end of the waste emergency talks by itself. Bertolaso declares it over on 18 December 2009, whereas the law 123/2008 makes it officially over only on 31 December 2009. However, Berlusconi claimed it as over already in July 2008, when he welcomed Naples “back to the West”. What is sure is that today the situation is regulated by a newly born decree, the 195/2009, which sets the managing should gradually pass from the hands of the Compulsory Administration for Waste Emergency (lead by Bertolaso) to those of local government. But it is sufficient to call the Local Observatory on Waste of Naples and ask for simple data on the region’s landfills to realize that anarchy reigns. Moreover, not all the landfills wanted by the law 123/2008 (dlg 90) have been opened by the end of the emergency state (31 December 2009) that allows the Italian State to breach national and European legislation in matter of waste.
It is precisely thanks to the emergency state that it was possible to open Terzigno’s landfill, right in the heart of a Protected Natural Area, namely in the National Park of Vesuvio, turning a quarry into a huge waste-eater, of both household and special waste, such as industrial mud and incinerator’s toxic ashes. In the name of the emergency, when quick action is needed, moving away from legislation it’s permitted. But in this light, it appears unexplained the last month’s decision to open another landfill in the Park. It’s opening was scheduled by the law 123/2008, but the landfill was not opened and the emergency status expired, showing the needlessness of that landfill for the resolution of the emergency itself. Bertolaso though, right before the expiry of the emergency status – as by law – has convoked a head table to discuss about the opening of a new landfill in the National Park of Vesuvio in the Cava Vitiello area, a space five times bigger than the current landfill placed in the Pozzelle area.
He was absent at the meeting, because busy with the Lucchese’s flood, but the Chief Officer of Naples substituted him. The result obtained is a majority of opposite votes, including those of the three Mayors of Boscoreale, Boscotrecase and Trecase and that of the Council Commissioner of Terzigno. Nevertheless, the Chief Officer concludes that the Compulsory Administration for Waste Emergency, and thus the Italian State, will reserve upon deciding whether to open or not that landfill. It is indeed on the 8th of February that the four councils receive an official communication from the Italian Cabinet, stating the upcoming opening of the landfill. A landfill, this too, that should host a mixture of household and toxic waste. But no explanation is provided whatsoever on how will it be possible to breach EU normative now that the emergency status is no more. The fact that today the Italian state is doing what the Camorra did before – namely mixing solid with toxic waste in a same landfill - seems not to shock anyone.

Landfill of Sant'Arcangelo Trimonte (Avellino, southern Italy). Picture taken by Giulio Rubino . January 2010.

The odour of death caused by the existent landfill it is already such that people cannot stand in the four cities’ public squares, it is hard to imagine the flowing of an ordinary life in a future coloured by two huge landfills set side by side.
But the havoc does not stop at the bottom of Vesuvio. The environmental destruction of Campania goes on, undeniably reminding Calvino’s Leonia, the landfill-city that overflows in all-embracing tiny illegal dumps, that slip along the horizon - interrupted only by cement monsters. By now the emergency has turned into landscape.
It is already since two years that the wiretappings included in the “Rompiballe” criminal investigation, wanted by the gip Rossana Saraceno, have unveiled serious controversies and raised doubts upon the measures taken by Bertolaso in Campania. “You do anything in your power, anything that can be useful. I have a precise aim: ‘slagging’ the technicians of the Ministry of Environment”, tells Bertolaso to his right hand Marta di Gennaro, in a phonecall of 17th May 2007. And talking about Terzigno’s landfill, Marta di Gennaro says: “We are talking about a landfill to cover up, and you ought to help us.”
Many would expect that similar information, once public, would have produced serious consequences for those involved, but it has not. The Undersecretary for Waste Emergency, Bertolaso, knows how to slip out also from protests and criticism. He is indeed very capable of convincing mass media about the rightness of his person. On November 18, 2009, he organised a “spazzatour” (rubbish-tour) with chosen journalists. They were brought to Acerra’s plant, that for the occasion switched on the three ovens [although still in a trail period] and to Terizgno’s landfill. But many other places were omitted from the tour: how to blame Bertolaso, the tour was little more than half a day long. When the Coordinamento Regionale Rifiuti has organised one for us, in January, it took us four entire days to complete a spazzatour. It indeed true, as Bertolaso praised, that Terzigno ain’t got seagulls. Nor has Ferrandelle (Caserta) stocking platform. It might be that seagulls don’t like toxic rubbish. But it is as true as that journalists weren’t made turn the corner, weren’t shown Marruzzella 3 (Caserta), where seagulls simply reign.

Temporay stock of RDF at Marruzzella 2 (Caserta). Picture taken by Giulio Rubino . January 2010.

In particular, Marruzella 2 (Caserta) was an ecoballe (packages of unprocessed refuse derived fuel) stocking platform. Today it is hardly possible to identify them: the coverings are torn apart, and only in some points it is possible to spot the ecoballe out of that shapeless mass of rubbish.
Moreover, the terrific havoc of the Regi Lagni – Bourbon canals that irrigate cultivated land – was left unvisited too. Journalists did not see the daily dumping of piles of toxic waste that takes place in full impunity. Journalists were not taken to Sant’Arcangelo Trimonte’s landfill, Benevento county, nor to Pustarza’s landfill, Avellino county, where huge black mountains have been built among shiny green land of secular olive trees.
In a windy day the black covering of those mountains flies, unveiling what lies beneath. Rubbish. Cascades of leachate pierce the drip and spread around. The smell of decomposition is, once again, a nightmare that holds you tight all the day, even after you got back to Naples, even after the second shower. And it is this very stink that forces minds to wonder: is it this way that waste emergencies shall we solved? By polluting the very land that allows us to live? Even if it were. Let us believe this huge effort by nature was truly necessary and let us believe this way everything was actually solved. A question would still remains: why would Campania need to open a new landfill in Terzigno? Which rubbish must end up there? If Bertolaso is our hero and the emergency is solved, the ex-CDR plants are working, the recycling has started and the incinerator is burning then, what is a new landfill for?
Maybe things are not exactly this way. According to the decree 90 there are still two missing landfills to be built: a second one in Terzigno and a second one in Campagna, in the Sele Valley. That very system that wanted them then, pretends them now. Even if this has to be done against everyone and everything, including natural parks and WWF oasis. Why? Because rubbish is gold.