On a slow trip back from hell: the infamous Black Triangle had the worst pollution ever recorded in the industrialized world. Now a sick and weary people are tackling their nightmare

International Wildlife, Jan-Feb, 1998 by Don Hinrichsen

Much of the cleanup effort is aimed at coal. The entire Black Triangle has 32 coal-burning power plants--14 in Saxony (Germany), 9 in the Silesian Industrial Zone of Poland and 9 in the Czech Republic. They continue to burn lignite, inefficient as it is, because it is cheap. But overall cleanup efforts are paying off.

The Prunerov Power Plant complex near the city of Chomutov is an example. By retrofitting all boilers with desulfurization scrubbers and by adding electrostatic precipitators to catch ash, dust, soot and attached heavy metals, the plant has managed to meet all pollution-control deadlines--as set by the Clean Air Act--well ahead of schedule. In 1991, the plant emitted 250,000 metric tons of sulfur-dioxide pollution, an amount equivalent to six times the entire output of Norway. "By 1997, we were down to 40,000 metric tons, well within the boundaries set by the Clean Air Act," says Jaromir Penkava, head of the plant's technical department. Over the same period, nitrogen oxides fell by half: from 40,000 metric tons annually to 20,000 metric tons.

But the battle to clean up is far from over. At Chemopetrol, a huge petrochemical works situated almost midway between Most and Litvinov, vistors can smell the plant even before they see it rising out of a photochemical haze like some primordial beast. It is the largest petrochemical plant in the entire country and produces a profusion of products--everything from jet fuel, heavy oil and benzene to urea, ammonia, alcohols, paints, resins and enough industrial feedstocks to supply every chemical plant in the republic.

Both of Chemopetrol's private power plants have been fitted with sulfur-dioxide scrubbers and electrostatic precipitators, and, says Jan Martinek, Chemopetrol's public relations manager, "more than half of all new investments have been in environmental control."

Still, nearby residents say the company is a heavy polluter. Both the refinery and the vast chemical division continue to spew a foul assortment of polycyclic hydrocarbons, organic chemicals and other hazardous emissions into the atmosphere. A number of them are linked to cancers and birth defects.

The company denies that any of its 5,500 employees suffer from health problems, but Anna Lajtarova, for one, is testimony to the contrary. Lajtarova was a secretary in Chemopetrol's economics depart- ment. She had to quit her job, she says, in part because of her failing health.

verall, the Black Triangle is far from restored, and back in Most, Stanislav Stys, who now runs his own consulting business, points to the wasteland around the city's remaining open-pit mine, confessing that the contrast between the regreening of the region on one hand and its continuing destruction on the other presents a surreal image. Down in the pit, smoldering coal fires ignite spontaneously, and excavators 10 stories high devour 5,000 cubic meters (6,800 cu. yds.) of earth an hour, their massive jaws fanning dust storms. As Stys speaks, a haze of photochemical oxidants forms on the other side of the valley, obscuring the view. "But you know," he observes, "we are committed to reclaiming this landscape and making it into an environment we can live safe-and-healthy lives in once again."