Don Sanderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Most people would be surprised to know folks live that close to one > of these.
Oh, that's nothing. The locals have their gardens where they grow strawberries, potatoes, and gurkins literally at the foot of the blast furnace, about 200 yards away from it, right next to a Seveso-class one chemical plant. There's a coking plant, about a mile away, which sure is one of the worst polluters this side of the Russian border: http://www.photosight.ru/photo.php?photoid=1145051 The second blast furnace has been closed, a year ago. But the electro steel mill is still there. All this in a rather deep, narrow valley with some 100,000 people living in a two-mile radius and the city of Liège just around the corner. Now, just imagine that there used to be 17 blast furnaces and five coking plants in the same spot, until the late 70's. Still, I love the place and the people. Not that I'd want to live there, but photographically it's a time-capsule. Its days are counted, though. The blast furnace, the last one in the Liège basin, will be closed down in 2009 and the coking plant's permit will run out in 2015. Ralf -- Ralf R. Radermacher - DL9KCG - Köln/Cologne, Germany private homepage: http://www.fotoralf.de manual cameras and photo galleries - updated Jan. 10, 2005 Contarex - Kiev 60 - Horizon 202 - P6 mount lenses -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
