Category: Mon Valley Miscellany || By jt3y

Occasional Almanac contributor Officer Jim writes:

As much as I hate to say this, I thought that the Trib's story on the Mon Valley was pretty good. It wasn't overly optimistic, but it didn't trash the region either. "Fair and balanced" in the Trib? Say it ain't so!

And I'd like to say that we both have brilliant insight into regional redevelopment, but obviously not:

Demand for industrial space is low in Pittsburgh, Stephenson said -- doubly so for a location without a major highway.

"If somebody can go someplace and they get easy access off the turnpike, why wouldn't they go there instead of getting caught up in the Mon Valley?" he said.

The "brilliant insight" to which Jim refers is last week's thumb-sucker, published here, about the Mo-Fo Excessway.

Although the Trib piece, by Mark Houser, was a nice package, I could nitpick a few details. The chart called "Homicides 2001-06" doesn't weigh the crimes by their per capita population. Ten homicides in Braddock Borough (population 2,900) works out to a much higher per-capita rate than 18 homicides in McKeesport (population 24,000).

And I'm not sure how useful it is to measure only "homicides"; "all violent crime" might have been more helpful.

But finding that data is difficult; some Mon-Yough area police departments don't submit Uniform Crime Report data to the federal government, and Pennsylvania's notoriously weak open-records laws mean that police departments don't have to release information if they don't want to.

So these are minor quibbles, and overall, it was a pretty good story.

Still, I remember writing a cover story called "Mon Valley Makeover" for City Paper in roughly May or June of 1996. And I'm sure if I thought about it, I could find other stories in other outlets about the "Mon Valley's recovery" from the last 20 years or so.

We writers keep churning out pieces about the "Mon Valley's recovery." When is the region going to, y'know, recover?

. . .

Old King Coal: Also in Sunday's Trib, Rick Stouffer wrote about the use and abuse of "pollution credits" by coal-fired power plants. There are two big coal-fired power plants in the Mon-Yough area --- Allegheny Energy's Mitchell Power Station near New Eagle and Reliant Energy's former Duquesne Light plant in Elrama.

Meanwhile, the Observer-Reporter and other outlets note that the Eighty-Four Mine in Washington County will close next year. About 100 miners will be laid off.

The closure comes about 10 years after 84 Mine's owners, Consol Energy, began longwall mining under several townships in Washington County, causing millions of dollars in property damage to homes, businesses and highways.

File that under the heading "long-term public welfare traded for a few short-term jobs."

And remember to look at that file once the new casinos open.

. . .

That's Not Funny, That's Sick: A few jokes stolen from Sunday night's Johnny Lightning show on WBCQ:

• "They say Osama Bin Laden's new video tape is trying to exploit our memories of 9/11. Wow. Someone get him a job on the Rudy Giuliani campaign."



• "An Ohio congressman was found dead inside his Washington apartment. His family is mourning their loss. They're comforted by the fact that at least he wasn't found dead in a men's room at the airport."



• "Did you hear that Halle Berry is pregnant? And she's going to keep the baby. There was a rumor that she was going to have an abortion, but after all, she already made Catwoman."