Surprise!!

 

Isn't Prati pretty? I mean it's really lovely. The most relaxing place I've been in a very long time and that's not an easy statement to make about Rome. The photo, it's not mine. It's from a really neat website called wantedinrome.com.  I've abandoned all hope of downloading photos.

But, it's pretty.  

The architecture is drop-dead gorgeous.

The Pope lives here.

The cafes and little restaurants are plentiful and each one, begging. Friendly. Charming.

The Tiber River runs alongside it.

The bridges that cross the Tiber are elegant and it's easy to wander over and over them, one side to the other, the rushing current beneath. 

But....and there's always a but.....the trash problem in all of Rome, even in this lovely section, is way out of control.  Way, way out of control.  Rome, sorry to say, is one very dirty city with littered streets and overflowing receptacles on every corner. And, no, there isn't a strike. This is a never-ending crisis that officially got its kick off in 2013 with the closure of its "Big Black Hole", the Malagrotta Landfill. 

So, here's another "surprise".  The landfill was owned by a man named Manlio Cerroni. It was the largest landfill in all of Europe and until 2013, the only site dedicated to the city's disposal of waste for about thirty years.

Manlio had a monopoly (surprise!) over garbage disposal and was known, in fact, as Il Supremo in and around the city. That is until Italian officials ruled the site to be unfit to treat waste, and shut it down (surprise!).

Since the closure of Il Supremo's masterpiece, there has not been a strategy to dump or treat the 1.7million metric tons of trash produced in Rome each year (surprise!) Recycling has fallen by the wayside  if you'll pardon the pun, and successive mayors from successive parties have been unable to come up with any solutions (huge surprise!) All this, despite the hard to bite fact that Romans pay one of the highest municipal waste taxes in the country!

So, here's the really big surprise.....while most of us think of Roman exports as beautiful, we had no idea of the city's biggest export. Trash. The Eternal City ships out 1.2 million tons of garbage every year. Out-of-the-country. Cost, $206 million. Let's not get crazy altogether and fantasize about what that could buy for the people of Italy. Mamma Mia!!

So, 1.2 million tons of dirty, filthy garbage goes sailing away every year to ports unknown.Where does the remaining half-million tons land up?  On the streets of Rome.

No surprise.

It all boils down to (ahem) corruption. Are you surprised? Looks like the big "M" word might be in play here. The Mafia, to put it politely, stinks. And, it appears that the Mafia wants Rome to stink right alongside it. Rome is drowning in trash.