Nosmo King
Gold Member
It is spectacular here in the Crotch of the Tri-State area! The vistas all look like postcard shots. As clear a sky as we ever get with temperatures into the high 70s and narry a whiff of humidity.
I was reminiscing about what the environment was like when I was a kid. When I was born, there were only 48 states, nothing had been blasted into orbit and the steel mills strung along the banks of the Ohio River like a string of sooty pearls were in full blast.
The mill just outside the state line was in Midland, PA. I worked there while I was home from college. A lot of my friends worked there too. Just down stream in Weirton, WV was the nation's largest sheet steel manufacturer specializing in steel food and beverage container cans.
They had an old blast furnace there that would emit clouds of electric arc furnace dust. What EPA regulations call K-O 67. Just know that this dust is rusty orange in color, very fine particles and stains what it lands on. The whole town of Weirton had an amber to rust colored patina. It snowed orange in Weirton.
When school shopping season rolled around we would pile into the big two toned Mercury and drive to nearby Baden, PA, only fourteen miles upstream as the river flows. The Northern Lights shopping center was directly across the river from the J&L Steel mill in Aliquippa.
Rail cars full of slag rendered out in the bank of blast furnaces would dump their molten loads down the river bank. It was as close to a volcanic eruption as we will ever get in this valley. But the hazardous metals in that slag; the lead, right into the river. And that river serves my drinking water.
In Midlad, which is the nearest mill to the Luxurious Pimplebutt Estate, they made 27% of the stainless steel consumed in the free world. Making that stainless involves immersing the strip of steel in hydrochloric acid. At night, when they purged the tanks of acid, a yellow haze was visible. As if you borrowed Charlton Hesron's shooting shades. Cars rusted from the roof down instead of from the wheel wells and rocker panels up.
But the most acute environmental hazard in my neighborhood was blasting caps. They were completing the southernmost highway link between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, about 100 miles. This end of the highway involved moving a massive amount of soil rock and shale. And that means blasting with high explosives.
To set them off a primer or blasting caps are used. The fear was one of us kids would happen on a stray blasting cap and blow ourselves to smithereens.
Visible air, contaminated water and explosives as inviting to a young boy as a circus parade. It's a wonder I made it! And it's a wonder we got it cleaned up!
I was reminiscing about what the environment was like when I was a kid. When I was born, there were only 48 states, nothing had been blasted into orbit and the steel mills strung along the banks of the Ohio River like a string of sooty pearls were in full blast.
The mill just outside the state line was in Midland, PA. I worked there while I was home from college. A lot of my friends worked there too. Just down stream in Weirton, WV was the nation's largest sheet steel manufacturer specializing in steel food and beverage container cans.
They had an old blast furnace there that would emit clouds of electric arc furnace dust. What EPA regulations call K-O 67. Just know that this dust is rusty orange in color, very fine particles and stains what it lands on. The whole town of Weirton had an amber to rust colored patina. It snowed orange in Weirton.
When school shopping season rolled around we would pile into the big two toned Mercury and drive to nearby Baden, PA, only fourteen miles upstream as the river flows. The Northern Lights shopping center was directly across the river from the J&L Steel mill in Aliquippa.
Rail cars full of slag rendered out in the bank of blast furnaces would dump their molten loads down the river bank. It was as close to a volcanic eruption as we will ever get in this valley. But the hazardous metals in that slag; the lead, right into the river. And that river serves my drinking water.
In Midlad, which is the nearest mill to the Luxurious Pimplebutt Estate, they made 27% of the stainless steel consumed in the free world. Making that stainless involves immersing the strip of steel in hydrochloric acid. At night, when they purged the tanks of acid, a yellow haze was visible. As if you borrowed Charlton Hesron's shooting shades. Cars rusted from the roof down instead of from the wheel wells and rocker panels up.
But the most acute environmental hazard in my neighborhood was blasting caps. They were completing the southernmost highway link between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, about 100 miles. This end of the highway involved moving a massive amount of soil rock and shale. And that means blasting with high explosives.
To set them off a primer or blasting caps are used. The fear was one of us kids would happen on a stray blasting cap and blow ourselves to smithereens.
Visible air, contaminated water and explosives as inviting to a young boy as a circus parade. It's a wonder I made it! And it's a wonder we got it cleaned up!
