(ANSA) - Italy's Civil Protection Department said on Wednesday it was confident a new rubbish
disposal programme for southern Italy would finally resolve the region's long-standing refuse crisis.
Department chief Guido Bertolaso said experts were putting the final touches to the plan and stressed the solutions proposed had already received a positive response from most of the authorities involved.
"I hope to complete everything by the end of the month," said Bertolaso, who was set to meet the government's commissioner for the refuse emergency, Corrado Catenacci, to discuss the final details.
Southern Italy and particularly the region of Campania around the port city of Naples have been plagued by refuse emergencies for years because of the lack of legal landfill dumps and rubbish disposal plants.
Last summer, protests against the construction of a trash incinerator in Acerra made international headlines. The protesters cited recent studies linking proximity to a waste power plant with an increase in cancer incidence.
Prosecutors are currently investigating cancer rates in the population living in Acerra and two nearby towns, Nola and Marigliano. A report by top Italian researcher Alfredo Mazza of
Italy's National Research Council published last year in the medical journal The Lancet linked an increase in cancer deaths to the Campania region's refuse problem.
Mazza stressed that the eastern part of Campania had one of the "worst records of illegal environmental activity in Italy, largely due to the Camorra, the indigenous mafia." Trash disposal is one of the Camorra's most lucrative businesses and the organisation has created hundreds of
illegal dumps in the region where it often buries dangerous refuse. It also disposes of waste by burning it in fields, generating potentially hazardous emissions.
