Rotting rubbish continued to pile up in the streets of Naples on Monday as the southern city and the surrounding region of Campania grappled with a fresh refuse crisis.
With nowhere currently available to put the rubbish, it has been accumulating for more than a week in parts of Naples and neighbouring towns and villages.
Some citizens have taken matters into their own hands by setting fire to the festering refuse.
Naples' fire service said it had received more than 100 calls alerting them to rubbish fires in the last 24 hours.
In one Neapolitan suburb, where rubbish was piled 1.5 metres high and blocking pavements and roads, residents protested by hauling refuse bins and sacks into the streets halting the traffic.
Doctors described the situation as "dramatic" and warned that the city faced a health emergency.
"There's a risk of infectious diseases given the rubbish combined with the heat. Burning the refuse makes matters worse by releasing dioxins into the atmosphere," they said.
Meanwhile, Serre, a small town near Salerno to the south of Naples, remained in uproar over plans to create a local waste dump to help ease the emergency.
The project would involve opening a dump to stockpile up to 500,000 tonnes of rubbish only kilometres away from the protected WWF Oasis of Persano.
Residents have set up blockades to prevent work going ahead on preparing the site to receive the waste.
The protest turned violent at the weekend, with clashes between residents and police which left 20 people injured.
Tensions were also rising in five other Campania towns where new landfill sites are also planned by the government, including in protected parkland on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.
Civil Protection chief and government-appointed refuse emergency commissioner Guido Bertolaso is due to meet with Naples and Salerno officials later on Monday to discuss the Serre dump project and proposals for alternative sites.
Some 50 Serre residents travelled to Naples to protest outside the offices where the meeting is to be held.
Serre Mayor Palmiro Cornetta said that if Bertolaso decided to push ahead with the dump, there would be further protests.
"That dump will be the death of our economy. We want to decide the future of our land and we certainly don't want to die," the mayor said.
Residents say the dump will be a health hazard in a region where recurring refuse-disposal problems have already been linked to a recent increase in cancer deaths.
Such fears have blocked regional government plans to build new incinerators, which citizens fear will not meet acceptable health and environmental standards.
CAMORRA INVOLVED.
Campania's rubbish crisis also has more sinister overtones due to the involvement of the Neapolitan Mafia, known as the Camorra.
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 or burns dangerous refuse.
Anti-mafia officials warned recently that the Camorra was actively sabotaging plans to build incinerators because it would undermine its dumping business.
According to Italian environmental organisation Legambiente, waste trafficking nets organised crime groups some 22 billion euros a year.
Naples Mayor Rosa Russo Jervolino said on Monday that the current crisis would take at least 15 more days to solve.
She conceded that the government's dump site creation plan was "certainly tough" but added that it was "absolutely necessary".
The elderly mayor denied rumours that the army would be brought in to help collect the city's rubbish.
Responding to a journalist who asked what she thought of the local bishop's weekend comment, "God free us from the dump sites", Jervolino replied: "Of course, but where are we to put the rubbish?"
On Sunday, Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio came out on the side of the Serre protesters.
"The aim should be to clear the rubbish from the streets but not necessarily dump it in protected areas," he said.
Environmental groups complained that the local and regional governments were not doing enough to find long-term solutions to the trash problem and weaken the Camorra's hold over the refuse trade.
They also said the local authorities had failed to promote rubbish recycling.
The environment ministry recently issued figures showing that Naples and the surrounding region only recycles 7.7% of its rubbish, compared to 38% in northern cities.
