Naples' Garbage Problem

Oh my!

Fires and protests greet cabinet in Naples

By Guy Dinmore in Naples

Published: May 21 2008 03:43 Last updated: May 21 2008 03:43

Barricades in the streets of Naples and the smoking remains of a torched Gypsy camp await the first official cabinet meeting on Wednesday of Italy’s new government under Silvio Berlusconi.

The billionaire prime minister promised in his April election campaign to take his ministers from Rome to this southern port city whose descent into the stinking chaos of piles of uncollected garbage became a rallying cry for his centre-right coalition.

Staying one night in the luxury Vesuvius hotel, at a reported cost of €4,200 (£3,345) for a suite with pool, it is not clear whether the 71-year-old media mogul will get a personal taste of the “creeping anarchy” described on Tuesday by the daily Mattino. With a burst of activity since the weekend, the city’s unpopular leftwing mayor Rosa Russa Iervolino got the historic centre – where the cabinet will meet – cleaned up and even had railings painted around public works.

Life is quite different in the grim suburbs where shoulder-high mounds of garbage have accumulated since the latest chapter in Naples’ long-running refuse crisis erupted in December.

The Anti-Smog Mammas Association advises parents not to send children to school in sandals for fear of rat attacks. Many are simply keeping them at home.

Over the past week or so, firemen have had to extinguish scores of protest fires set nightly by residents. Some newspapers reported that Mr Berlusconi has received intelligence reports that Mafia gangs, known in Naples as the Camorra, are setting fires in order to assert territorial dominance.

While many residents are pinning their hopes, but not much faith, in Mr Berlusconi to alleviate their plight, at least seven protest rallies are being organised, from environmentalists to labour activists and immigrants.

In the northern suburb of Chiaiano, residents are keeping vigil to stop a municipal proposal to use a vast disused quarry inside a park as a new “mega-tip”. Trees have been felled and cars overturned to block access.

According to unconfirmed reports, Chiaiano will be one of 10 new tips to be designated by the cabinet on Wednesday. People are furious. From the left and right as well as the Camorra, residents have united in protest.

“It would be like making a rubbish tip out of Hyde Park in London,” said Ludovico Maratello, spokesman for the protest committee.

Another kind of fear is gripping the city’s Roma or Gypsy community, which blames right-wing nationalists in the government, as well as the media, for whipping up a xenophobic frenzy over security and immigration during the elections. This manifested itself in mob attacks last week after a Gypsy teenager was said to have been arrested for allegedly trying to steal a baby.

An illegal Gypsy camp in the largely Camorra-controlled suburb of Ponticelli was still smouldering on Tuesday. One man explained that they had torched the shacks after making sure all the residents were safely driven away.

Anti-immigration measures, as well as tax cuts for property owners, are on the cabinet agenda on Wednesday. Gypsies, many of them born in Italy but denied citizenship, fear they will be targeted. “This government is full of fascists,” commented one Gypsy who asked not to have his name published.

Globalization, Meet Gates of the Arctic

Scary stuff from the National Park Service: BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - Pesticides, heavy metals and other airborne contaminants are raining down on national parks across the West and Alaska, turning up at sometimes dangerously high levels in lakes, plants and fish. A sweeping, six-year federal study released Tuesday found evidence of 70 contaminants in 20 national parks and monuments - from Denali in Alaska and Glacier in Montana, to Big Bend in Texas and Yosemite in California. The findings revealed that some of the Earth's most pristine wilderness is still within reach of the toxic byproducts of the industrial age. "Contaminants are everywhere. You can't get more remote than these northern parts of Alaska and the high Rockies," said Michael Kent, a fish researcher with Oregon State University who co-authored the study. The substances detected ranged from mercury produced by power plants and industrial chemicals such as PCBs to the banned insecticides dieldrin and DDT. Those can cause health problems in humans including nervous system damage, dampened immune system responses and lowered reproductive success. Contaminants that accumulated in fish exceeded human consumption thresholds at the eight parks that researchers focussed on most: Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Gates of the Arctic and Denali national parks and Alaska's Noatak National Preserve. Also, mercury levels at the eight parks and DDT levels at Glacier and Sequoia and Kings Canyon exceeded health thresholds for fish-eating wildlife. Kent said he found airborne contaminants are causing male fish to develop female organs in some parks. Much of the contamination is thought to have come from overseas - traveling global air currents from Europe and Asia. But researchers said they were surprised to find substantial contamination from the local use of legal pesticides, particularly in agricultural areas around Glacier, Rocky Mountain and Sequoia and Kings Canyon parks. University of Washington atmospheric researcher Daniel Jaffe said scientists previously thought banning substances like DDT and dieldrin would lessen the persistence of chemicals in the environment. "We replaced them with pesticides with much shorter lifetimes in the environment," Jaffe said. "But in places like the Central Valley of California, we are applying many, many tons of these every year. ... We now know they can move substantial distances." A parks advocacy group called the federal report "a wake-up call" that should mobilize Congress to take a tougher stance on air pollution. "We can take steps to reduce mercury emissions from power plants, steps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming," said Will Hammerquist with the National Parks Conservation Association. The $6 million study is known as the Western Airborne Contaminants Assessment Project. It is the most comprehensive to date on the distribution and concentration of contaminants outside developed areas, according to the project's scientific director, Dixon Landers with the Environmental Protection Agency. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that remoteness means less pollution, Landers said many of the parks - particularly those at higher elevations and in colder climates - actually are at higher risk. Mercury from power plants in China, for example, is borne across the Pacific in clouds that rise up when they hit West Coast mountains. That causes the mercury to drop out of the clouds attached to rain droplets or snowflakes, he said. Release of the study, which was coordinated by the National Park Service, came after a delay of several months. A Park Service spokeswoman, Colleen Flanagan, said the delay was caused by the time needed to analyze the vast volumes of data collected, from 2002 to 2007.

Love Canal, Times Beach, and St. Louis Park

Sometimes, opening your mail can be as treacherous as the backstreets of Minneapolis after a snowfall.

Dear Resident, We regret to inform you that known carcinogens may be seeping into your home. Rest assured, there is no need to panic. With love, Your friends at the EPA

Minnesota State Bird?

Another reason to hate (and fear) mosquitoes:

Almost 270 people in Italy's province of Ravenna may have been infected with chikungunya, a virus that causes fever, rash and joint pain, since it arrived with a tourist three months ago. The outbreak was caused by the same viral strain that sickened about 235,000 people on Reunion island in the Indian Ocean last year, says an Italian virologist investigating the episode.

Now Italy is threatened by a contagious illness that may also spread elsewhere in Europe and North America the same way it got to Ravenna -- through an infected traveler. There were 2.1 billion airplane passengers last year, driving the spread of new diseases that are emerging at ``an unprecedented rate,'' the World Health Organization said last month.

Canary in the Coal Mine

Gopher Girl isn't normally predisposed to isolationism, but the lack of basic safety standards and inspections on food imported from China is terrifying.

Norway's Arctic Ice is Melting

Another unseasonably warm week here in the City of Lakes. The December rains are greening my lawn. Meanwhile, Northern Europe is also experiencing a heat wave, with the Scandinavian capitals reporting temperatures in the 50s today. Oslo’s Aftenposten reports that the snowless December has Norwegians talking, and worrying. “The Arctic ice is melting faster than even the most pessimistic forecasts of just a few years ago. Norwegian climate experts have worried about the Arctic for years, while also noting how glaciers on the Norwegian mainland are shrinking by the year.” http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1567233.ece

We're All on Thin Ice

We finally watched An Inconvenient Truth last night. Wow. Everyone must see this movie! For more information, including simple steps you can take to reduce greenhouse emissions, go to: http://www.climatecrisis.net/