Until a few days ago, Antonietta Moccia, a 61-year-old hostess, hoped that the Italian authorities would ever fight the disposal of illegal waste that had long plagued her city and other north of Naples.
Her daughter was diagnosed with rare cancer at the age of 5 in the area where the cancer clusters are related to pollution. But her years of marches, sitting and comforting neighbors whose lives became too early death of loved ones brought little.
The case, she nodded on a crowd of garbage – construction debris, various objects and plastic bags filled with a variety of waste – accumulated along the dusty back street in Acerra, her hometown.
“We need less conversation, more actions,” she said. “It’s been talking for years.”
Recently, the European Court of Human Rights allowed to be known to feel almost the same. The Court based in Strasbourg, France, found that the Italian authorities had long been aware of illegal defaults in the area of colloquially known as the “land of fire” due to permanent burning of toxic waste.
But it was said that local and national authorities had not been able to act several times. The court cited a report from the 1997 parliament, which said the rejection lasted from at least 1988.
“Progress was glacial,” seven judges ruled unanimously, saying that their “right to life” was denied the residents. He ordered the Government to immediately take measures and report in two years.
Residents and environmental activists said they hope that the decision will finally break the logic of inactivity to clean one of the poorest areas of Italy, where about three million people are scattered among 90 municipalities.
Current study of the main Italian authorities Heath found ua 2023 Report that the mortality rate for people in this part of Campania was 9 percent higher than the rest of the region. People had a greater chance of dying of malignant tumors (10 percent higher) or circulatory system diseases (7 percent higher), and in some cases the statistics were high: the cases of liver tumors in women were 31 percent higher.
“We hope that in all Italian politicians it will come to conscience,” said Enrico Fontana, who monitors the environment and legality for Legambiente, the largest Italian environment group. “Hope is that this significant verdict will initiate the right of national unity with a national strategy that sees the forces at all levels react together to solve the problem.”
The case included complaints of many residents who wanted to know if Italy had violated Article 2 of the Convention on Human Rights, the right to life, not managing to purify the mess and whether the Italian authorities also broke the right of people to information about this pollution in the area.
An additional 4,700 citizens have filed in Strasbourg’s complaints regarding the same questions, and these cases could move forward if Italy fails to prepare the entire strategy within a two -year deadline that has been ordered by the court.
The case in Strasbourg was attracted to the findings of several parliamentary commissions, scientific studies, reports on environmental groups and expert opinions, showing that the area was deliberately allowed to become a landfill.
Manufacturers in Italy and beyond, experts said, concluded secret contracts with Camorra, such as a well -known local mafia, to illegally disposal dangerous waste due to a fraction of the costs of legal delay.
Burying the waste in its backyard, Kamorra could secure a measure of protection and silence.
“This is what is known as the area of sacrifice, a vulnerable low -income community, a low education that has already fought” socially and economically, said Marco Armiero, an expert in the political ecology, which was included in the case in the case of the Court.
The opening of the 2009 Acerra incinerator “added an insult to the injury of the polluted community” and did not bring any relief to the management of toxic waste, he said in a telephone conversation. As a result, he added: “These communities no longer trust the institutions.”
The renewal of trust can only come from the court offers, he said.
The European Court of Justice gave Rome for two years for the development of a “comprehensive strategy” for resolving the situation, including decontamination of areas where toxic waste was buried and burned.
It calls for Italy to set up a “independent mechanism for monitoring and platform for public information” for residents. The court found that “it was impossible to get the overall feeling where he had not decontamined himself,” and called for a better coordination among the institutions to address the issue.
“The overall situation is still worrying,” said Fabrizio Bianchi, a researcher at the National Institute of Clinical Physiology of the Council for Research in PISA. Despite the decades of delay, he said, time is still from the essence.
“As far as we continue, if decontamination and pressure on the territory is not mitigated, the more negative effects will be felt,” he said.
Antonella Mascia, a lawyer who represented some of the people who filed a complaint, said that the court was rarely detailed with his recommendations to Italy, citing a two -year time limit.
After this period, the court said that the issue of financial fees would also be addressed for those who put in claims. “But it’s not about money, it’s about checking that a violation has come to make a change – this is a spirit,” Mrs. Mascia said.
Her colleague in Acerra, Valentina Centonza, said Italy must make a priority to find the funds to fulfill the recommendations of the court, from the decontamination of territory to monitoring so that no new landfill develops. As is the case, garbage breaks across the rear roads all over the area.
“To solve the problem, you have to invest in that,” she said.
The court was also clear that the locals should no longer be kept in the dark about what was happening in its territory, for better or worse.
“There must be transparency regarding what has not been done and what must be done,” said Alessandro Cannavacciuolo, a local environmental activist.
He said he was shocked in the consciousness of pollution when lambs with two heads or two tails or one eye began to give birth to family agriculture.
Health authorities eventually ordered the whole flock to be put off. His uncle, Vincenzo, died within a few weeks from lung cancer that metastasized.
Earlier this month he was invited to a meeting at the prefecture of Naples with various health bodies, legislators, law enforcers and environmental activists in order to address the judgment of the court. He said tangible proposals were missing.
“Talk, talk, talk. Eh, this territory has already heard a lot of conversations,” he said.
Attempts to reach the Campania regional authorities were not successful.
Mr. Cannavacciuolo, who is 36, could leave his native region, but decided to stay and fight. “Our roots are here,” he said. “Why leave the country that belongs to us? The people who polluted him were those who should leave.”
Others can’t wait to leave. Maria D’Alise, 18, known to everyone as Miriam, was only 5 years old when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor that was diagnosed with affects about 650 children annually in the European Union. “In Acerra, a city of 60,000, there were three cases,” said Mrs. Moccia, her mother.
Now without cancer, but still deals with the consequences of her treatment, Mrs. D’Alise is in the last year of high school and hopes to become an artist for tattoo after she graduated. Not in Acerra.
“I had what I had here,” she said, “and should I have children when I grow up, I don’t want them to have my same experience, so I’m leaving.”
