In October 1982, they shut the mill in my hometown ... 5.000 jobs ... boom gone. The air got better but drug, alcohol, spousal abuse grew. Haynes Johnson wrote a great piece in the Post about the "change".
don't get me wrong. That emoticon was not a happy one. the trade off is not something to be happy about. there were other problems with steel industry finances (foreign dumping, competing against modernized plants in lower wage countries) to make closure likely even without regulations. I just did not want to make a pittsburgh joke about the air and imply that it is bad now.
Now back to watching Flashdance.
