Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Cleaning up the Old Country

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Central Europe is the "Old Country" for tens of thousands of southwestern Pennsylvanians. A new day dawned in the Old Country when communism was given the boot nearly a decade ago, and the first waves of exhilarating change have given way to the heavy lifting of young nations where democracy remains a novelty and capitalism an exciting opportunity.

Cleaning up the environment, abused during 40 years of communist rule, has emerged as a major issue. Industrial cities still sometimes resemble the smoke-bound Pittsburgh of the 1950s, and villages struggle to keep their water clean, their traditions intact.

Don Hopey, Post-Gazette environmental reporter, spent 10 days in the Czech and Slovak republics to see how the cleanup is going. He traveled with representatives of the Howard Heinz Endowment, which funds projects in Central Europe that make use of the environmental expertise of Pittsburgh businesses, universities and nonprofit organizations.

In this two-part series, Hopey first reports from Ostrava in the Czech Republic, a city so similar to Pittsburgh that it is nicknamed "Metal City." He then describes the challenges facing two rural towns and an industrial city in eastern Slovakia.