East Germany Struggles to Clean Its Air and Water

Abstract

East Germans are working hard on a strategy to improve their polluted environment. Industrial plants are largely responsible for this pollution. A shroud of haze veils the suburbs of East Berlin. Far to the south the giant power plants around Leipzig pour more dust and sulfur dioxide into the air than in any other country in Europe. More than 90% of the country's electricity comes from brown coal, accompanied by prodigious quantities of dust and sulfur dioxide: almost 6 million tones of sulfur dioxide and more than 2 million tones of dust in 1988. East Germany enjoys some of the cheapest energy in the world, and the world's third highest energy consumption per capita, behind the United States, and Canada. Naturally, is also suffers air quality and health problems. The country is trying to cut down on consumption and clean up on generation. Actually, water quality is the number one priority, which unlike air is in very short supply.