Poor Stewardship: Illegal dumping in Roman catacombs

Italian police investigate after part of tomb complex along the Appian Way is found to contain an underground lake of discarded oil. 

Underground caverns and tunnels used as tombs since the second century BC had been filled with harmful waste over the years, creating an underground lake of acrid oil, Italian media reported. Italy is home to some of Europe’s largest landfill sites and has been fined millions of euros by the European court of justice for failing to clean up its illegal dumping grounds. The waste management business has also provided fertile ground for organised crime in the country’s poorer south, most notoriously in the “Land of Fires” north of Naples, where rubbish has been dumped and burned, poisoning the environment.

Reuters in Rome,"Illegal dumping in Roman catacombs leaves precious ancient site polluted", Tuesday 26 January 2016 .