Elbląg - An Environmentally
friendly Town

The Pope's visit and an "ecological" award from the European Union are the two most significant events for 1999 written into the town chronicle of more than 760-year-old Elbląg.
 The pilgrimage of the Holy Father had been planned well in advance, but the award from the EU, recognition no other Polish city received, came as a very pleasant surprise.  It was a surprise because everything that Elbląg has done in recent years and is doing now to protect the environment was not done to earn praise and awards, but due to a universal recognition of the need to significantly improve the local environment.
 What has been done?
 Under the slogan "Cities and the Re-quirements of the European Union", 215 cities in 10 Central and Eastern

European countries were evaluated The prestigious award, which is honorary, though not financial, was given to the town's mayor Henryk Słonina in Brussels on November 11.  In citing the reasons why Elbląg received the award, the mayor emphasized that it represented the town's overall undertaking to protect the environment, particularly those aimed at dealing with the town's  wastes, protecting the water and air, as well as making information about the environment easily accessible.
The problem of dealing with the garbage of this town of 130,000 was solved through the building of a new Waste Utilization Plant in nearby Rubno.  Designed and built by a company from Bydgoszcz, the plant began operating in 1998.  Constantly modernized, the plant was recently upgraded with new equipment allowing it to utilize the "biogas" energy it emits in order to produce electricity to run the town's wastewater treatment plant.  Improvements have also been made to the system of collecting garbage.  Throughout the town 360 con-tainers of various colors have been placed, which are marked "Glass", "Paper", and "Plastic."  These and the containers on   large housing estates are produced by one of Elbląg's metal companies.
 The water that runs from the taps in the

city has been rated as one of the clean-est in Poland, though it does not yet
meet EU standards.  For this reason, the town is doing all it can to find means of improving its quality in the next 2-3 years.  In terms of sewage, however, the wastewater treatment plant already meets .

EU standards. Thanks to this, the Elbląg River and the  neighboring Wiślany reservoir and Lake Drużno are full of more and more fish.
 The town's superior air quality is the result of several things, including the elimination of old boilers from housing estates and, especially, the building of an ecological power station and the efforts of the largest industrial plant in Elbląg, ABB Alstom Power, which specializes in the production of steam and gas turbines, heavy elements for ships and various types of foundriesAn electro-filter that effectively re- moves 99.7 % of the particulate emissions went into use in the local power station last year.  The level of particulate matter emitted is lower than EU norms require.  Likewise, the modernization of burners and nozzles in the boilers has lowered their emission of nitrous oxide by half. ABB Zamech, reorganized last year as ABB Alstom Power, has installed over the last few years machinery for filtering arc furnaces that melt metal, a technological line that allows 80% of the raw material to be effectively utilized (at a level of 35 thousand tons annually) and which previously had be hauled off to the town landfill, an aggregate for emission-free cutting of metal with water, as well as hermetically-sealed rooms for cleaning rough castings with metal abrasive. The line for producing the polyure-   thane foam used for insulating heater pipes has also been modernized.  This has eliminated freon emissions, which are harmful to the atmosphere's ozone layer.The city has also been continuously planting new trees and shrubs. In recent years 10,000 walnut, lime, and plane trees, as well as 70,000 shrubs and 10,000 rose bushes have been planted.
 To the long list of Elbląg's achievements in the environment protection, we can add the building of bicycle paths on the city's new and modernized roads, and above all the development of pro-environmental consciousness among the town's youth.  Two years ago, the School for Ecological Education was built in the

picturesque town of Piasek on the Vistula River sand bar by the Russian border.  Students from all levels of Elbląg's schools attend the school for five-day sessions (from Monday to Friday) that provide lessons and practical education about protecting the environment.  All schools throughout the city are also carrying out the "Agenda 21" program, es- tablished at the international conference on the environment in Rio de Janeiro.
 Elbląg - an environmentally-friendly city.  This slogan and the actions that confirm it comprise one of the basic advantages of the city in its search for new Polish and foreign investors.  A search that has become more and more effective.