Like every year, thousands of tourists and party-goers swarm the streets of Old Nice, from shop to shop, in stifling heat. In some alleys, the pestilential smell is unbearable. Trash and garbage bags pile up here and there with total impunity. And to top it all off, rats and cockroaches shamelessly join the party…
How has Old Nice, a major hub of tourism in Nice, come to this? Is this situation inevitable and irreversible? Not really.
Daniel Silvetti is among those more than just discontented; he is a victim of the general unsanitary conditions. Owner of a restaurant specializing in Niçois dishes, “Lu Fran-Calin”, located just a few meters from a garbage room, he regularly complains, among other things, about the infamous smell emanating from it. And the current high temperatures only make matters worse. “On the terrace, I often have to move people to another table,” he laments. “I’ve tried all kinds of products to mask the smell, including incense sticks placed all over. But nothing works.”
The situation in Old Nice has never been, and will surely never be, perfect, but today it has become critical. And hygiene in certain places really leaves much to be desired. Yet, the main factors of the phenomenon are well known.
Firstly, how can we overlook the famous problem of the garbage rooms. Just a few weeks ago, metal containers still served as dumps. The rooms remained open at all times, allowing access to traders and residents at any hour of the day or night. However, a fire outbreak forced the replacement of the metal containers with plastic dumpsters and, above all, the closure of the rooms after the last round of garbage collection, around 7 PM.
“I understand the safety reasons for this new measure,” explains Daniel Silvetti. “But now, people don’t want to go into this stench, they toss their garbage bags which, half the time, fall to the ground. At night, a mountain of waste piles up in front of the gate. We need to find a solution quickly; I can’t expose my customers to this spectacle for much longer.” And as the situation worsens, the incivility of the population becomes more apparent. “The municipality has promised us that it’s going to repaint and retile all the rooms, maybe that will encourage people to be more respectful,” continues the restaurateur. “But anyway, the solution is simple: these places need to be cleaned thoroughly four or five times a day, instead of just once as is currently the case, and a large part of our problems will be resolved…”
Garbage is not the only cause of unsanitary conditions in the old town. There’s also the lack of public toilets, the streets being cleaned with a small vehicle from CANCA, less effective than the traditional pressure washer used just a few years ago, the tags and posters that wildly squat walls, columns, or iron curtains, or even scooters and household appliances that are seen lying around the alleys in a state of advanced disrepair for weeks on end.
Among the residents of Old Nice, but even more so for the merchants, who rely on the summer season to fill their coffers, anger is rising. Discussions are underway, but as always, concrete measures are slow to arrive. And with the heat wave looming in the coming days, there is a sense of urgency. The final word comes from Daniel Silvetti, about Senator-Mayor Jacques Peyrat: “Instead of killing dying rats with a shovel, he would do better to pass the water jet down the street…”
Nicolas Pelazza