Police used teargas to disperse several hundred protesters near a waste treatment center at Terzigno, and briefly held two people following several arrests earlier in the week.
But tension in the city, Italy’s third biggest, escalated again on Thursday, as a group of protesters smashed up shop windows with clubs, news agencies reported. “We want to breath, it’s our right!” read one of a series of banners hung in the streets.
The protests are the latest episode in a chronic scandal over garbage collection in the region which has resurfaced in recent weeks, prompting growing calls for action from Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Political incompetence, corruption and the influence of organized crime have all contributed to a 16-year public emergency that has seen Naples street’s regularly fill with rotting rubbish.
As in the past, the current wave of protests is targeting existing or proposed new dump sites as residents fear contamination by unregulated and toxic waste disposal.
“We are women, we are mothers, let us protest, let us stop those trucks that will bring death to our children,” said one protester as police intervened to let the garbage trucks reach the Terzigno site.
The governor of the Campania region around Naples said the protests will not stop plans to build more waste disposal sites.
“For 15 years, the whole of Campania has been a dump site for toxic waste and nothing was done about it. The law says there should be a disposal site for every province, and it must be respected,” Stefano Caldoro told reporters.
“Today’s fears are due to the illegal practices of the past when all sorts of dangerous materials ended in the dump sites. But now we are talking about waste sites that are checked rigorously, that exist in the rest of Italy and in Europe.”
The garbage crisis is a blow for Berlusconi, who often boasts that clearing Naples’ streets shortly after he came to power in 2008 was one of his government’s main achievements.
“There is an emergency that has not been solved ... the government should stop telling us about miracles but find a solution to a situation that risks triggering a real revolt,” said Pierluigi Bersani of the main opposition party, the PD.
Hundreds of tons of refuse lie uncollected on the streets in the area around the southern city, with the Terzigno site often blocked by protesters and an incinerator facility operating at reduced capacity.
Plans to open a new dump nearby have rekindled protests, forcing garbage trucks to operate under police protection in recent weeks after a number were attacked by firebombs.
The mayor of Naples, Rosa Russo Iervolino has appealed for help from the central government in dealing with the crisis, saying there is not only a risk to public health but also a threat to public order.
