« This sucks ! » (“It’s disgusting”), gets carried away by one of the many German tourists, after almost slipping on a ripped garbage bag, in front of a starred restaurant in the historic center. «You will kill them! “ (“To hell with them!”), replies a Roman girl in dialect.
No effective treatment system
The summer garbage crisis is such that insults against the left-wing mayor, Roberto Gualtieri (elected in 2021), his predecessors and the company AMA, responsible for collecting waste, are coming from everywhere. As if they could have a thaumaturgical effect on the evils of the Eternal City.
The Roman administration fails to get rid of urban waste. There are several reasons for this: there is no effective treatment system, the Malagrotta landfill, the largest in Europe, was closed in 2013, and incessant political battles are blocking the installation of a thermovalorizer ( waste-to-energy plant) at the gates of the capital.
So everyone adapts, as best they can, to the obligation to slalom between the pestilential rubbish that litters the sidewalks and squares, which have become feasting places for gulls, pigeons and rats. And especially since hundreds of AMA employees are conspicuous by their absence for imaginary illness. A recent medical examination, in good and due form, was enough to cure 350 garbage collectors overnight so that they began to remove the tons of garbage invading the city, which produces two million a year!
Fires broke out
The mayor pledged to use the Albano landfill, 30 km from Rome, pending the reopening of the waste treatment plant on the former Malagrotta landfill, which burned down on June 15, and to find “solutions worthy of a European capital”.
He also promised to improve the maintenance of public parks, transformed into dangerous jungles in this period of record heat wave. Since June 15, a series of fires have broken out. The latest, the most serious, dates back to July 9. That day, flames reminiscent of an atomic mushroom rose in the south-east of the capital on via Casilina, near car scrapyards and a large park. “Dense and blackish smoke even covered the sky above the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus”, testifies a bus driver.
For three days, the inhabitants of the neighborhoods devastated by the fire, which luckily caused no injuries, were asked to keep their windows closed, to wear a mask and not to buy anything in the local markets. The Regional Agency for Environmental Protection (Arpa) noted a dioxin level 35 times higher than the limits set by the WHO.
Pool of magistrates
“I am ashamed for the leaders of Rome and its region who have no political courage, no vision for the future, for children and vulnerable people, forced to live in unsanitary conditions”, laments Father Stefano Cascio, parish priest of Saint-Bonaventure.
The Rome public prosecutor’s office has set up a pool of magistrates to investigate the causes of the fires, which could be of criminal origin. Pending his conclusions, it would be enough for neighborhoods to flare up again for the authorities to come to declare a state of emergency.