Until a few days ago, Antonietta Moccia, a 61-year-old housewife, had little hope that the Italian authorities would ever tackle the illegal waste disposal that had long plagued her town and others just north of Naples.

Her daughter was diagnosed with a rare cancer at age 5 in an area where clusters of cancers have been linked to pollution. But her years of marches, sit-ins and comforting neighbors whose lives were upended by the untimely deaths of loved ones had yielded little.

Case in point, she nodded to a mound of garbage — construction debris, sundry objects and plastic bags stuffed with varied refuse — piled along a dusty back street in Acerra, her hometown.

“We need less talk, more action,” she said. “There’s been talk for years.”

Recently, the European Court of Human Rights let it be known that it felt much the same. The court based in Strasbourg, France, found that the Italian authorities had long been aware of the illegal dumping in an area colloquially known as “the land of fires” because of the persistent burning of toxic waste.

But it said that local and national authorities had repeatedly failed to act. The court cited a 1997 report to Parliament that said the dumping had been going on since at least 1988.

“Progress had been glacial,” seven judges ruled unanimously, saying that residents had been denied their “right to life.” It ordered the government to take immediate action and report back in two years.