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Reviews
| Devastation and Renewal: An Environmental History of Pittsburgh and Its Region. Ed. by Joel A. Tarr. Pittsburgh, Penn.: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. viii+281 pp., illus., maps, tables, notes, index. $32 hb (ISBN 0-8229-4156-2).
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Devastation and Renewal accomplishes what few edited volumes do: it provides readers with a coherent and connected argument focused on a singular topic. The core of the book's material comes from a 2000 conference on "Pittsburgh's Environment: An Historical Perspective." The book's nine contributors conscientiously seek to blend their contributions in covering different aspects of the city's environmental history: smoke and air pollution, industrial impacts on the landscape, including slag deposits, and even environmental "progress." In addition, Joel Tarr provides an introduction and afterword that successfully unite and frame the material within the central theme of Pittsburgh's environmental history. Overall, this is a well-edited, coherent volume about the environmental history of one of this nation's major rustbelt cities and should be read by anyone interested in environmental history.
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Tarr opens Devastation and Renewal with a chapter outlining Pittsburgh's environmental setting and the scope of the volume. He sets the stage by observing that "cities are human artifacts subject to the various pulls of economic, political and cultural forces, and these often result in compromises that produce less than ideal results" (p. 10). The following chapter, coauthored by Edward Muller and Tarr, focuses on the interaction between built and natural environments. Muller and Tarr describe the natural environment and then place the industrial landscape on top. They demonstrate the interaction between natural and industrial environments through a discussion of Pittsburgh's rivers, hillsides, valleys, coal and coke industries, streets/streetcars, sewers, and bridges. They analyze the constant struggle between private and public interests to control the landscape.
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This general discussion of the natural and built landscapes is followed by a chapter concentrating on the rivers surrounding Pittsburgh: human interactions with these bodies of water, their effects on transportation, and their industrial impact. Edward Muller describes how the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers affected prehistoric, historic, and contemporary development in the Pittsburgh region by providing food, transportation, power, and recreation. This chapter sets the stage for the next one written by Tarr and Terry Yesie about decisions surrounding water and wastewater. Using early-20th century documents, Tarr and Yesie explore the city's use of its rivers for sewage, subsequent problems with typhoid fever, the development of alternative means of sewage disposal, and the emergence of water filtration and eventually sewage treatment.
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Nicholas Casner's contribution focuses on the environmental impact of industry on water supply. After familiarizing the reader with acid mine drainage, Casner explores its impacts on the natural environment and particularly on Pittsburgh's water supply. The impact was so severe that McKeesport, Pennsylvania (an area on the outskirts of Pittsburgh), could boast of having the world's most heavily treated water supply. Casner's wide-ranging discussion includes legislation related to clean water, the role of local political boards involved in water sanitation, and the sealing of coal mines as a solution to minimizing acid mine drainage. By using an interesting mix of primary and secondary sources, Casner provides an exceptional account of an industrially impacted environment.
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The volume then shifts from water to sky with Angela Gugliotta's and Lynne Page Snyder's accounts of the smoke problem in Pittsburgh. Through newspapers, journals, and other secondary sources, Gugliotta details the history of smoke in the area, from early accounts tying smoke to economic prosperity, to a willingness to sacrifice air quality for that prosperity, to the growing realization that prosperity and smoke need not be intimately connected, all leading to eventual smoke control. Snyder's contribution continues the discussion of air pollution through an examination of the disaster that struck Donora, Pennsylvania, in 1949—a death-dealing smog that killed almost 20 people. Snyder discusses the role of local zinc works, tied to the area's dominant steel industry, and how public health policy (from the local to the federal level) affected the impact of pollution on local populations. For those vaguely familiar with Pittsburgh's environmental history, this chapter provides a specific example of an industry's impact and is particularly potent given the zinc works location outside of Pittsburgh but tied to Pittsburgh's steel industry.
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The discussion of air pollution continues in the next chapter, where Sherie Mershon and Tarr address smoke control movements and clean air strategies occurring in the middle of the 20th century in both Pittsburgh and Allegheny counties. Mershon and Tarr combine oral interviews, commission reports, and accounts of political campaigns and legal actions to formulate their discussion of the emergence of air-pollution management strategies. Ultimately, implementation of effective smoke control in Pittsburgh was aided by a shift to nearby natural gas fields as an alternative (and less polluting than coal) source of thermal energy. Smoke control in Allegheny County centered on the railroad and a corporate system of self-governance.
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The penultimate chapter shifts the focus of pollution from air to land in Andrew McElwaine's essay on slag dumping in the area of Pittsburgh known as Nine Mile Run. Despite the intention of zoning laws, the desire of citizens' committees, and the vision of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., that this area should be used as a park, conflict and miscommunication enabled corporate interests to purchase and use Nine Mile Run as a dumping ground for metallic waste. Eventually, the 238 acres within Nine Mile Run were covered in slag, in places as much as 120 feet! McElwaine's chapter is a poignant example of the environmental impact an industry has on its surrounding population when alternative possibilities are not followed.
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The final full chapter brings the reader back to a general consideration of Pittsburgh's environmental history. As a participant-observer, Samuel Hays re-examines Pittsburgh's touted environmental success. Involved in the region's environmental movement for three decades, Hays examines the city's self-image and the state of its environmental culture (citizen groups, media, formal environmental education, and more general public knowledge), drawing some general comparisons between Pittsburgh's experience and that of other locations. Hays does not support the popular notion that Pittsburgh's environmental history is one of success. Instead, he asserts that there has always been a major difference between Pittsburgh's celebration and its practice. Devastation and Renewal ends with an afterword by Tarr that ties up themes first considered in his introduction.
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| Tarr is to be commended for successfully piecing together a diverse group of essays into a coherent, well-edited volume that practically reads as a single work. Indeed, Devastation and Renewal can be enjoyed either as an integrated book or as individual, stand-alone chapters. Besides those interested in environmental history, the book will be of interest to readers concerned with the history of steel, industrial health, the history of Pittsburgh, industry's impact on landscape, and corporate response to environmental issues. Read it for a better understanding of how industries within the rustbelt have affected their environments. |
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