A plan by Italian authorities to build Europe's biggest garbage dump inside a national park on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius is "an abuse by the state," the director of the park told AFP on Friday.
"The presence of a garbage dump inside a national park is against the law," Ugo Leone, who is also a professor of environmental policy at Naples university, said in a phone interview after government talks on the issue.
"It's an abuse by the state," Leone said.
The plans for the Cava Vitiello dump, which will have a capacity of three million tons, as well as anger over an existing dump, Cava Sari, also inside the park, sparked violent clashes in the Naples area this week.
"From the beginning we have opposed this by all legal means possible," said Leone, adding that he was "in absolute agreement with everything that the citizens of the area and the environmental groups are saying."
Vesuvius National Park consists of around 135 square kilometres (52 square miles) of rare natural beauty in the Bay of Naples. The area has rare plants and wildlife.
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