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In
this Nov. 18, 2013 photo, rubbish is piled up on the edge of cultivated
land near Caivano, in the surroundings of Naples, southern Italy.
Dozens of fields in the area were sequestered by police, prohibiting any
one from harvesting or even setting foot on the plot. Decades of toxic
waste dumping by the Camorra crime syndicate that dominates the Naples
area poisoned wells, authorities have found in recent months, tainting
the water that irrigates crops with high levels of lead, arsenic and the
industrial solvent tetrachloride. (AP Photo/Salvatore Laporta)
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CAIVANO, Italy (AP) - On Ciro Fusco's farm in the shadow of Mount
Vesuvius, police swooped down one recent day and planted a warning sign
in his broccoli fields, prohibiting any one from harvesting or even
setting foot on the plot. Dozens of other fields in the area were
sequestered in the same way. Decades of toxic waste dumping by the
Camorra crime syndicate that dominates the Naples area poisoned wells,
authorities have found in recent months, tainting the water that
irrigates crops with high levels of lead, arsenic and the industrial
solvent tetrachloride.
The warning came too late: Fusco had already sold some of his broccoli at nearby markets.
The
farmlands around Naples, authorities say, are contaminated from the
Mafia's multibillion-dollar racket in disposing toxic waste, mainly from
industries in the 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. The poisoning is triggering widespread fear
and outrage in the Naples area, and tens of thousands of people marched
through the city's chaotic streets last month demanding to know whether
they have been eating tainted vegetables for years.
In
an interview with The Associated Press, the head of the Naples
environmental police force rattled off a list of substances in higher
than permissible levels contaminating 13 irrigation wells on farmlands:
arsenic, cadmium, tin, beryllium and other metals; tetrachloride and
tolulene among other chemicals used as industrial solvents.
Gen.
Sergio Costa did not provide specific levels as tests were ongoing, but
described the amounts as reaching "dangerous" levels. On one farm in
Caivano, Costa said, four times the permissible level of lead was found
in the irrigation well's water. Cabbages irrigated by that water were
found to be contaminated with lead, although tomatoes irrigated with the
same well showed no harmful lead levels, said Costa - illustrating the
complexity of testing crops for toxicity. The wells are not used for
drinking water.
Analyses
of the vegetables are still being conducted, and Fusco was waiting to
learn if his family's farm's broccoli was tainted. Costa said the crops,
irrigated by wells later found to be contaminated, were sold only in
markets in the Naples area. Officials estimate that waste seepage from
one of the more notorious sites, a hill-like dump in the nearby farm
town of Giugliano, a short drive away, will keep poisoning the water for
half a century.
A
top Camorra boss, Francesco Bidognetti, was convicted last month of
poisoning the water table in the town of Gugliano with toxic waste and
received a 20-year sentence. It was by far the stiffest punishment yet
for waste dumping and a strong sign that the state is cracking down on
the lucrative racket. Much of the waste the Camorra has trafficked has
come from factories, processing plants and hospitals, mainly trucked
down from in Italy's industrial north to the mobsters' power base near
Naples and Caserta.
Some
of the waste was buried under a soccer field in Casal di Principe, the
stronghold of the Casalesi crime clan that dominates the illicit
business, along with a few other families. Naples-based anti-Mafia
Prosecutor Giovanni Conzo said in an interview that waste was also
buried under a water-skiing pool in the town of Castel Volturno, near
the sea.
Camorristi
"poisoned their own territory, they poisoned their own blood," said
Costa, the Naples environmental police force chief.
According
to a nationwide environmentalist group, Legambiente, Camorra mobsters
since 1991 have systematically dumped, burned or buried nearly 10
million tons of waste, almost all of it coming from factories that
either don't seek to know where the waste ends up or are complicit in
the crimes. According to evidence used in trials, the waste contained
PCBs, asbestos, industrial sludge and metal drums filled with dangerous
solvents used to make paint.
"How could this all happen?" Michele Buonomo, Legambiente's Naples-area president, said in an interview.
Franco Roberti, Italy's top organized crime fighter, offers an explanation.
It
wasn't just the Camorra profiting off the waste racket, he said in an
AP interview: In Italy's industrial north, factories and processing
plants saved at least half the cost of the going rate of legitimate
waste disposal or detoxification. Companies falsified documentation
identifying the wastes' content, said the national anti-Mafia
prosecutor. In the Camorra's power base, he added, town officials, dump
operators or farmers with vacant land closed an eye for their own
payoff.
Roberti
said the first Camorra turncoat to reveal the business of waste
trafficking told him in interrogations that "monnezza" - Neapolitan for
garbage - was, in effect, worth its weight in gold.
Investigators'
first big break came in 2007, nearly 20 years after the mobsters
started trafficking in wastes. Turncoat Gaetano Vassallo, from the
Casalesi clan, gave prosecutors a "very complete picture" about the
racket, Roberti recalled. He told them where waste had been dumped and
buried. And he indicated which companies, mainly in Italy's north, were
turning to the Camorra to cart away waste.
Vassallo's
tips were borne out when investigators, using backhoes and shovels, dug
into the sprawling Giugliano dump. Exhaustive analyses of soil samples
by a geologist in a two-year study, whose results were made public this
fall, found many of the cancer-causing or otherwise harmful substances
exactly where the turncoat said Bidognetti had them dumped over several
years. Some of the waste trafficked by Bidognetti allegedly came from a
major dye-manufacturing plant in the northwest Piedmont region, which
was eventually shut down after Piedmont residents grew alarmed when
local rivers were colored with the factory's runoff.
Geologist
Giovanni Balestri's study, commissioned by Naples-based anti-Mafia
prosecutors, of soil and aquifers contaminated by the dump found a
laundry lists of substances similar to those discovered around the
Caivano farms: Chromium, lead, nickel, sulfates, toluene and other
substances - all in concentrations higher than, often far exceeding,
permissible levels.
Costa
said the vegetables irrigated by water from contaminated wells was
destined for local markets, not supermarkets - whose strict quality
standards, backed up by spot-checks, would virtually eliminate the
possibility of any tainted produce from reaching tables beyond the
Camorra's backyard.
Italy's
agriculture minister last month hastened to assure consumers that
testing of the produce is continuing "non-stop." Nunzia De Girolamo was
referring to a strategy devised by Costa: Since much of the waste seeps
down to aquifers, which feed irrigation wells, his squad is analyzing
the water of each well supplied by the contaminated aquifers, a
painstaking process that started this year and will take several more
months to complete.
Farmers scoffed at the idea their vegetables - a key part of the much-touted healthy Mediterranean diet - would be bad to eat.
"I
eat them, my sons eat them and my grandchildren eat them," said
Domenico Della Corte, holding up a cauliflower as big as a bridal
bouquet.
Meanwhile,
Naples anti-mafia prosecutor Conzo speaks of another fear: The mob may
be poised to cash in on the massive cleanup - using its time-tested
expertise at muscling in on public contracts.
Mafia toxic waste dumping poisons Italy farmlands 
