From NYC, Italian immigrants fight a landfill in their hometown
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- October
- 20
There’s a community of Italian immigrants, all from the town of Andretta, living here in Harrison, Westchester County, New York, I learned last week. They went to the Columbus Day parade in Manhattan, but not just to wave the flag. I caught up with them on Fifth Avenue.
Their club, Comunita Andrettese, is fighting plans for a huge landfill in their hometown. They held a protest rally in the hope of getting attention from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
There’s something very Westchester about fighting a landfill, but this effort had an international, not-in-my-old-country twist.
The group is worried that project would contaminate water used for drinking and for irrigating the Puglia region of Italy. It’s part of a larger story about the garbage crisis in Naples. To immigrants here — those I spoke to worked in construction, plumbing, engineering and management — the plan would ruin the peaceful agricultural area they return to annually to visit relatives.
You can click here for a blog on the topic or visit this online forum. Both will allow you to practice your Italian — the word of the day being “discarica,” or landfill.
This entry was posted
on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 2:07 am by Leah Rae.
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