In easygoing Naples, stinky garbage puts city in a rage

NAPLES, Italy -- Unkempt and charmingly disobedient Naples has a reputation for closing its eyes when a preteen motorcyclist zips around the corner without a helmet or a cigar smoker lights up in a bank.

But closing its nostrils -- that was too much to ask.

Lately, Naples has stunk, amid a crisis of hanky-clenching proportions after the city ran out of space to dump its rubbish. Kitchen bags crammed with putrefying cold cuts and used tissues overflowed from garbage bins, locals set refuse ablaze, and easygoing Neapolitans turned trash-talkers.

"The stink was brutal. Flies all over the place. There were mice," said Max Cozzolino, a 30-year-old grocer in the rough-and-tumble Spanish Quarter. "People didn't want to smell the stench so they lit it on fire."

The city has cleared most of the garbage, and Naples looks better than than it did. But the stench set off an investigation into what role the mafia may have played in making a big mess even messier.

The problem started about two weeks ago, when dumps were packed to overflowing and other areas refused to take the garbage. Officials had long planned to build two giant incinerators, but locals and environmentalists didn't want them, fearing pollution.

Suddenly, the garbage got out of control.

Locals donned surgical masks, schools closed to keep kids away from the waste, and vandals set fire to hundreds of overpacked bins.

Neapolitans were raging. But, officials say, it could well have been more than just resident indignation.

The Naples mob, known as the Camorra, makes a dirty fortune out of illegal dumping in what are known as "ecomafia" activities. By working up the crisis, officials say, the Camorra may have been looking to earn extra cash by attracting desperate residents in need of a dump.

A report by the environmental group Legambiente cites 1,592 garbage disposal infractions across Italy in 2002, most in Sicily and the Naples region, Campania. Illegal disposal earned $2.8 billion in 2002, the group says.

Meanwhile, Naples has been going through the sanitation-department equivalent of a long, hot shower. The mayor sent squads to disinfect the streets, starting with areas around schools and hospitals.

Truckers are shipping garbage overflow to three Italian regions that agreed to help, Emilia Romagna and Umbria in the north and Puglia in the south.

Dumps are taking trash again. And one town that refused to house a massive incinerator has been legally forced to.

Looking back, the mayor sees local pride in her city's passionate response. "I'd prefer a city that reacts too much to one that doesn't respond at all," she said.

However, Neapolitans are worried that no amount of industrial-strength detergent will cleanse the idea of a stinky Naples from the minds of tourists.

Already, the city suffered a reputation for petty crime, disorder and dirtiness. Tourists charmed by northern Italy's Renaissance glories, its countryside and its food sometimes shy away from locations south of Rome, despite the sights, atmosphere and outstanding cuisine.

Naples' top tourism official worried that the garbage mess had sullied years of work. In any case, Nicola Oddati argued, bad moments occur in every big city.

That's not to say that Naples is Copenhagen.

"There's a bit of chaos here that you wouldn't find in Denmark," he acknowledged. "But that's part of Mediterranean life. That makes it attractive. We just need a balance."