Health Fears As Rubbish Piles Up Again

It starts right behind the main station: piles of stinking rubbish up to 3 meters (10ft) high. It gets steadily worse the further you drive from Naples' center.

In the area known as Tribunale Nuovo, you witness the first overturned skips and evidence that rubbish has been strewn around, then set on fire - scorch marks spreading 5 to 6 meters along the tarmac.

Despite the efforts of a "special commissioner" appointed by the previous Italian government, the rubbish that first inundated Naples in December has been slowly reappearing. The city center was tidied up for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's visit yesterday, but an estimated 2,700 tonnes remained to be collected, as well as a further 50,000 tonnes in the surrounding region of Campania.

Naples, as with much of Italy, has had an unusually cool spring. "But when the heat starts, anything could happen," said Antonio Esposito, a market trader. "A lot of people fear we could get an outbreak of cholera like we had in the 1970s."

Esposito was among demonstrators supporting the introduction of a proper waste treatment cycle in the region. Campania has no incinerators and its landfill sites are full.

Among the measures announced last night was a €10m-plan to monitor health risks to Neapolitans. It includes provision for a network of 200 "sentry doctors" who would be "trained to recognize possible alarm signals such as the spread of contact dermatitis, diarrhea [and] hepatitis", said the junior health minister, Ferruccio Fazio.

Other measures include deploying the army to block demonstrations and the jailing of anyone who attempts to sabotage the opening of a landfill or incinerator. One reason for the crisis is that residents have mounted often-violent protests against such sites, fearing they could bring deadly pollution.

The government also promised four new incinerators. They will take years to construct, but they offer a long-term solution to a problem that has already endured for 14 years.