Naples waste management crisis
[1] In 1994, Campania formally declared a state of emergency, ending in 2008, however, the crisis has had negative effects on the environment and on human health, specifically in an area that became known as the triangle of death.
Due to the burning of accumulated toxic wastes in overfilled landfills and the streets, Naples's surrounding areas became known as the "Land of pyres" (terra dei fuochi).
[4] In 1998, he initiated a request for tender to companies to build waste treatment plants, including incinerators, to generate refuse-derived fuel from the "ecobales" (bales formed of refuse).
[4] By the end of 1998, FIBE, a consortium of Salini Impregilo won the tender, which was highly based on its low cost rather than its proposed use of technology to manage the waste crisis.
[4] FIBE was given the power to decide the location of facilities without local consultation or environmental impact assessment, and by 2002, had planned to build an incinerator in Acerra and Santa Maria la Fossa.
[4] In September 2004, a scientific publication in the Lancet Oncology coined the term "triangle of death" with regards to the region comprising Acerra, Nola and Marigliano, due to their reported higher cancer rates compared to the whole of Italy.
In May 2008, the newly elected prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, decreed that protests in the vicinity of landfills, incinerators or any plant related to waste management, is a penal felony.
[13] In July 2008, Berlusconi started the Operazione Strade Pulite (Operation Clean Roads), which brought in the Italian Armed Forces to aid in garbage removal from the streets.
[23] Between June and November 2011, the newly elected mayor of Naples, and former antimafia magistrate, Luigi de Magistris, managed the quantity of uncollected garbage in the streets, which declined from 2,500 tons to zero.
"[4] The boss of the Casalesi clan, Gaetano Vassallo, admitted to systematically working for 20 years to bribe local politicians and officials to gain their acquiescence to dumping toxic waste.
