Only a few days ago, Antonietta had Moccia, a 61 -year -old housewife, a little hope that the Italian authorities sometimes deal with illegal waste disposal, which has long been bothering its city and another north of Naples.
Her daughter was diagnosed with rare cancer at the age of 5 years in the area where cancer clusters were associated with pollution. Her years of marches, sit-ins and calming neighbors, whose lives were increased by premature death deaths, brought little.
An example was nodded to a pile of garbage – building fragments, various objects and plastic bags filled with various rejection – accumulated along the dusty rear street in Acera, its hometown.
“We need less talk, more actions,” she said. “We’ve been talking for years.”
The European Human Rights Court recently reported that it felt almost the same. The court based in Strasbourg, France, found that the Italian authorities had long known of illegal dumping in colloquially known as the “country of fires” due to the persistent burning of toxic waste.
However, it is reported that local and national authorities could not act repeatedly. The Court quoted a report from 1997 to a parliament, which stated that the deposition has been running since 1988.
“Progress was a glacier,” the seven judges ruled unanimously, saying that the residents had been denied their “right to life”. He ordered the government to immediately undertake and serve in two years.
Residents and environmental activists said they hoped that the decision would finally break Logjam inactivity to clean one of the poorest areas of Italy, where about three million people are dispersed between 90 municipalities.
The ongoing study of the highest authorities of Italy found va 2023 Report that the mortality of people in this part of Kampania was 9 percent higher than the rest of the region. People had a better chance of dying of malignant tumors (10 percent higher) or circulatory system (7 percent higher) and in some cases the statistics were sharp: cases of liver tumors in women were 31 percent higher.
“We hope that all Italian politicians will jerk conscience,” said Enrico Fontana, who monitors the environment and legality for Legambiente, the largest Italian environmental group. “We hope that this orientation decision will create a real national unity with a national strategy that sees forces at all levels to respond together to solve the problem.”
The case concerned complaints of the score of the population who tried to know whether Italy had violated Article 2 of the Human Rights Convention, the right to life, by not cleaning the mess and whether the Italian authorities also violated people’s right to information on information about pollution information.
Another 4,700 citizens have filed complaints in Strasbourg on the same questions and these cases could move forward if Italy could not prepare the overall strategy on a two -year court.
The case of Strasbourg drew from the findings of several parliamentary commissions, scientific studies, reports of environmental groups, and the opinions of experts, which showed that this area was intentionally allowed to become a landfill.
Manufacturers in Italy and further, experts have stated, reducing secret agreements with Camorra, as is known to the local mafia, illegally dispose of hazardous waste for a fraction of the cost of legal disposal.
By burial waste in the backyard, Camorra could secure The degree of protection and silence.
“This is what is called the victim’s area, a vulnerable low -income community, a low -educational community that has already fought,” said Marco Armiero, a political ecology expert who has considered in the court.
The opening of the incinerator in Acera in 2009 “added an insult to the injury of the already contaminated community” and did not bring relief to the management of toxic waste, he said in a telephone interview. As a result, he added: “These communities no longer trust institutions too much.”
Rebuilding Trust could only come from the fact that the court offered, he said.
The European Court gave Rome for two years to propose a “comprehensive strategy” to deal with the situation, including decontamination of areas where toxic waste was buried and burned.
It calls on Italy to create an “independent monitoring mechanism and a public information platform” for residents. The court found that “it was not possible to get the overall feeling where it was not yet to be decontaminated” and called for better coordination between institutions to solve this problem.
“The overall situation remains worrying,” said Lorenzo Bianchi, research worker at the National Institute for Clinical Physiology in PISA. For over decades, he said that time was still essential.
“The further we continue if the decontamination is not carried out and the pressure in the territory is not alleviated, the more negative effects are felt,” he said.
Antonella Mascia, a lawyer who represented some of the people who filed a complaint, stated that it was rare for the court that it was so described in detail by its recommendations in Italy, specifying a two -year period.
After this time, the court stated that it would deal with the issue of financial compensation to those who would claim claims. “But it is not about money, but the verification that there was a violation to change – that is the ghost,” said Mrs. Mascia.
Her colleague in Acera, Valentina Centonze, said Italy must make a priority to find funds to meet the court’s recommendation, from the decontamination of the territory to its monitoring so that the new landfills are not developed. As it is, the garbage is covered on the back roads across the area.
“If you want to solve the problem, you have to invest in it,” she said.
The court was also obvious that the local population should no longer be held in the dark about what is happening in its territory, for the better or worse.
“There must be transparency about what has not happened and what has to be done,” said local activist of environmental activist Alessandro Cannavaccuolo.
He said he was shocked into the consciousness of pollution when lambs with two heads or two tails or one eye began to be born on a family farm.
In the end, the health authorities ordered the whole flock to be postponed. His uncle, Vincenzo, died within a few weeks of lung cancer that metastasized.
At the beginning of this month, he was invited to meet in Naples Prefecture with various medical authorities, legislators, coercive bodies and environmental activists to deal with court decisions. He said that tangible proposals were insufficient.
“Speak, talk, talk.” Eh, this area has already heard a lot of talk, ”he said.
Attempts to address regional authorities in Kampania were unsuccessful.
Mr. Cannavaccuolo, who is 36 years old, could leave his home region, but decided to stay and fight. “Our roots are here,” he said. “Why leave the country that belongs to us?” People who polished it should leave. ”
Others can’t wait to leave. Maria d’Alise, 18 years old, known to all like Miriam, was only 5 when she was diagnosed with a certain type of brain tumor that It affects about 650 children annually in the European Union. “There were three cases in Acera, a city with 60,000,” said Mrs. Moccia, her mother.
Now there is cancer, but it is still dealing with the consequences of her treatment, Mrs. D’Alise is in high school last year and hopes to become a tattoo artist after graduation. Not in Acera.
“Here I had what I had,” she said, “and I should have children when I grow up, I don’t want them to have the same experience, so I’m leaving.”