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  Pittsburgh lends cleanup expertise By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer -- September 6, 1998
OSTRAVA, Czech Republic -- The front porch running the length of the Hostalkovice Sporting Club looks out over a clean, emerald green soccer pitch. The club's back windows, facing east toward this gritty city of 330,000, frame a hazier picture. This view - from the club's main activity room, where trophies line the walls, some of the world's best pilsner is drunk and American-style country line dances are held - is often clouded by a pall of sulphurous smog. A dozen red-and-white striped smokestacks rise from chemical factories, a power plant, two coking operations, an incinerator, and two steel mills to dominate an otherwise low-profile city skyline. They belch noxious fumes. If smoky Pittsburgh in the 1860s was "Hell with the lid off," Ostrava, in the heart of the central Moravian coal basin 170 miles east of Prague, may be the next worst thing. From steel to coal to coke to chemicals, parallels between the two cities are striking. Even Ostrava's belated efforts to show a cleaner face trace Pittsburgh's tracks. Libuse Wronova, 54, who lives in a ground-floor apartment at the Sporting Club, said the view to the east is much clearer than three years ago. That's when residents switched from coal to natural gas to heat their homes. Pittsburgh made that transition by the mid-1950s. "We used the coal sludge because it was the cheapest fuel available, but with the
yellow smoke coming out of everyone's homes the smell and dirt were terrible,"
Wronova said. "I'd say the atmosphere has improved by 70 percent.
Scarred by industry That Wronova's generation is giving any thought to the environment represents a change unimaginable only a decade ago. Ostrava grew to city size in the 19th century around coal mine portals - an industrially opportune but environmentally disastrous bit of urban construction. Wronova's generation spent 40 years under a communist government that piled the dirt higher and allowed no complaints. "In the past we were used to a different style of living." she said. "The air was dirty, the rivers smelled. We didn't know better or different and came to accept it." Air pollution hung low and brown over Eastern Europe's "Metal City." Its rivers - the Odra and Ostravice - became too dirty for trout. Contaminated fields of coal wastes, toxic sludge ponds, abandoned industrial sites and mountains of fly ash and slag grew in the city. Those industrial scars haunt Ostrava's future. The last of Ostrava's six in-city mines closed only two years ago, but subsidence from two centuries of digging continues. A royal example is a castle near the Ostravice River, built in the 13th century to guard the former border between Moravia and Silesia. It's fallen more than 40 feet. "The castle was in the hills and now it's in a valley," said Mojmir Sonnek, Ostrava's architect and planner. "Now all the hills are slag piles." After the downfall of Communism in 1989, Czechoslovakian society was transformed. With freedom of speech and open government, people began to complain about the environmental degradation. The Czech Republic passed environmental laws based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations. City and citizen committees negotiated cleanup schedules and emissions limits with many industries. A phased-in enforcement program kicks in next year. Sonnek said the city's air is already much improved and, like southwestern Pennsylvania government and business leaders, blames continuing problems on inversions - weather conditions that trap pollutants over the city - and pollution blown in from other parts of Europe on prevailing winds. "It's not a problem in Ostrava only," he said, "but throughout Central Europe." Sonnek said the stricter environmental laws of the European Union, which the Czechs hope to join in 2003, are pressuring industries and utilities to clean up or close. Changing markets and aging facilities also play a role in such decisions. Several steel mills have shut down, and steel production has fallen to half its 1989 level. Many coking operations have closed too. Thousands of workers are idle. The Karolina coking plant, less than a mile from Masarykovo Namesti, the city's central square, was pulled down a few years ago but pumped toxic emissions over the historic shopping district for more than a century. Today the coke works property, just past Ostrava's Opera House, is barren and black with oil, coal residue and heavy metal contamination. The city wants an office tower built there - Ostrava's first skyscraper - but the soil must be cleaned first.
It's not an isolated problem. The city has identified 51 abandoned "brownfield" industrial sites in met-ropolitan Ostrava. The biggest is the 160-year-old Vitkovice coal mine, coke works and steel mill, slated to close in December. Soil is contaminated to a depth of 25 feet, and greenish-brown, cancer-causing coke oven gases still billow from the ill-fitting doors on the coke batteries. Ostrava's planning office recommended the mill's shutdown because it's near residential areas and downtown. "There are hardships, but we can see the necessity of closing down some of these operations," Sonnek said. "Other sources have taken some measures to reduce pollution, and the city's environment is improving as a result." One house at a time In Ostrava's middle-class blue-collar Hostalkovice district, environmental improvements are coming one house at a time. The 1,500 residents of this well-tended neighborhood of wood-frame and stucco houses are getting a crash course in the environmental and financial benefits of home weatherization and energy conservation, courtesy of the "Nice Place to Live Project." The project is an experiment to see if working-class Czechs will spend money to insulate their homes to save money and energy in the long-run. It's funded by the Howard Heinz Endowment and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and patterned after the Green Neighborhood Project that operates in Carrick, Knoxville and Lawrenceville. Energy audits are conducted to identify a house's age, construction, size, and utility costs. Then the type of insulation needed is recommended - door sweeps, floor or attic insulation, window seals. Auditors have been through the Sporting Club, Wronova's apartment and about 20 homes in Hostalkovice. "It's a good idea because the price of electricity continues to grow," Wronova said. "It's good for the people to know how much operation of public buildings and homes costs and how much they can save." Jan Cernota, Hostalkovice's personable mayor, has put his dervish-like energy and environmental interest - he pushed through the coal-to-natural-gas-conversion and municipal garbage pickups - behind the project.
He does commercials for the "Nice Place" project on the city cable channel, where updates feature the names of residents who have had energy audits done, and the locations of the next audits. "Now the people getting the audits are doing it because they're curious," Cernota said. "Later, they'll hear by word-of-mouth from neighbors how doing the weatherization can save them money." Hostalkovice residents spend about a third of their income on utilities. Despite the self-interest angle, the weatherization program has been a tough sell. But it wasn't easy to start in Carrick, either, said Zdenek Jakubka, executive director of "Nice Place," who visited Pittsburgh two years ago see the Green Neighborhood Program in action. "This project is a gate to an improved environment. It's about what people are interested in - how to save money and stay healthy," said Jakubka, who founded an environmental group named VITA, for "life," in 1991. Environmental groups flourished after the 1989 revolution, but most have since died. VITA lives, working with teachers to set up environmental programs in schools and overseeing the Heinz-sponsored residential energy conservation program. "The Czech environmental movement is growing," Jakubka said. "But our people don't know yet how to push the government to make good environmental choices. We will learn. We are learning."
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