Senate approves the decree on the state of emergency in connection with the "Ecomafia"

The decree, which was approved by the Senate, was submitted to the government in December last year. It aims to tackle the environmental crimes of the so-called "Eco-mafia", including the industrial pollution of the ILVA steel plant in southern Italy.

By law, burning garbage without authorization becomes a crime. The law also introduces stricter management of agricultural land, where waste was often illegally dumped. Among other things, the new legislation requires the use of water filters . It provides harsh penalties for the perpetrators and contributes to the allocation of an additional 600 million euros to the 300 million euros previously allocated for the clearance of land used for illegal landfills.

The level of soil toxicity in the land used for agriculture will be within strict limits. The law includes measures that will also affect the resolution of the problems of the ILVA steel mill in the southern Italian city of Taranto, which has been at the center of many court cases.

The powerful mafia of Naples Camorra has long infiltrated all areas of the garbage disposal industry and reaped huge profits from illegal landfills and uncontrolled waste incineration, which has caused high rates of cancer and other pollution-related diseases that plague future generations.

In particular, its disposal of toxic waste, including incineration, in the southern region between Naples and Caserta caused serious harm to human health and led to frequent fires. Criminal waste disposal has become one of the main factors of environmental pollution. Hundreds of thousands of tons of waste, some of which are hazardous, have been illegally dumped for years and become an ecological time bomb that will continue to poison the earth for at least another 50 years.