The Cloud Factory, mourned too soon
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When you walk across the Schenley Park bridge, there, from the park into Oakland, you pass above the Cloud Factory. What does it do? we used to wonder. Why do these great clouds, perfectly white and clean, white as new baseballs, come out of that building by the tracks?
-- "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," by Michael Chabon
This depiction in Mr. Chabon's debut 1988 novel forever changed the way thousands of Pittsburghers look at a mundane, century-old building that provides steam heat for a cluster of buildings in Oakland and Squirrel Hill.
PG STORE
The book did not, however, change the way Allegheny County Health Department looked at the Bellefield Boiler Plant. And so it ordered the consortium that runs the factory to stop polluting.
The official words were more formal, of course, but the result was the plant switching from coal to natural gas in the first part of last year. Gas costs more than coal, most of the time, but all other non-polluting alternatives, including "clean coal, would be even more expensive.
The PG ran a brief about this switch almost a year ago, but not all of us read everything on page B-3. So it was news to me when Frank Williamson Jr. of Squirrel Hill wrote a couple of weeks ago to tell me of this change in fuels.
"For years," Mr. Williamson said, "as I crossed the Schenley Bridge, the movements of the small diesel switcher as it pushed coal cars into the furnace of the plant was a wonderful attraction. Surely, I am not alone. Surely."
He suggested I write "a proper obituary" for this change at the Cloud Factory.
I took this to mean the new, non-polluting plant had spewed its last cloud. That was not what Mr. Williamson was saying but, leaping from A to Z in a single bound, I e-mailed Michael Chabon in Berkeley, Calif., to this effect. I asked if I could get a few words on this change at the Cloud Factory "for its 'obituary.' "
He left me a phone message, saying, "what a terrible thing" and said he'd be happy to talk more about it later. While I waited yesterday morning for it to become a decent hour in California and call Mr. Chabon back, I continued gathering information here.
First Published January 28, 2010 12:00 am
