The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that Italy violated the right to life of Italians living in a toxic-waste polluted area around Naples and ordered the government to develop a strategy to address and monitor the contamination and resulting health problems.
The binding judgement from the Strasbourg-based court confirmed that increased rates of cancer and groundwater pollution had been recorded in the area of 90 municipalities known as the Tierra dei Fuoci, or Land of Fires, where some 2.9 million people live.
The court found that Italian authorities had known about the pollution problem, blamed on mafia clans called Camorra that control waste disposal, since 1988 but failed to address it and had not done what was necessary to protect residents' lives.
Residents have long complained about adverse health effects from the dumping, which poisoned underground wells used to irrigate the farmland that provides vegetables for much of Italy’s center and south. Over the years, police have sequestered dozens of fields because their irrigation wells contained high levels of lead, arsenic and the industrial solvent tetrachloride.
Authorities say the contamination is due to the Camorra’s multibillion-dollar racket of disposing toxic waste, mainly from industries in Italy’s wealthy north that ask no questions about where the garbage goes as long as it’s taken off their hands — for a fraction of the cost of legal disposal. Camorra turncoats have revealed how the racket works, directing police to specific sites where toxic garbage was dumped.
Forty-one people who live in Caserta or Naples provinces and five local organizations brought the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
