Seeing green in brownfields

Blue Smoke, tainted water - Ohio River towns struggle to clean, revive dead factories

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Stories by Spencer Hunt
Photos by Mike Munden

Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2005

NEW BOSTON, Ohio — Just as every other worker did during the first year on the job, Joe Wells rotated through almost every task at a Scioto County steel mill.

A kid in a new pair of steel-toed boots, Wells was scared to death when he first stepped onto the open-hearth floor in 1973 and watched workers tap molten steel from the mill’s massive blast furnaces.

He helped at the nearby coke plant, baking coal into the fuel burned to make steel. In the rail yard, he toiled with an endless stream of train cars that brought in coal and ore and shipped out ton after ton of finished steel.

And like the others, he watched the factory and the steel industry change. In 1980, after years of fierce foreign and domestic competition, Cyclops Corp. closed the mill. Wells and a lucky few kept working at the coke plant.

Then, in the spring of 2002, the owners locked the gate and filed for bankruptcy. . . ......................................................... Read more