
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 15, 1995                   TAG: 9501280009
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: G-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHATTANOOGA

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., not unlike Roanoke, is a small (population city in the southern Appalachians. It also is experiencing a revival that Roanokers might find interesting.

In 1969, the federal government named Chattanooga the nation's worst air polluter. Drivers often turned on their headlights during the day to pierce the smog, reports The Wall Street Journal. Some commuters packed an extra shirt to change into at the office, because foul air from nearby factories soiled what they had worn coming to work.

Then Chattanooga got religion on environmental quality. Air quality now has been good for years. And in the process of changing its ways, the city found that Holy Grail that other cities like Roanoke still seek: its economic niche.

Boosters recognized that the city had neither the major airports and other attributes that big cities could offer prospective employers, nor the cheap labor that small towns use as a selling point. So Chattanooga, as it scrubbed its pollution-blackened face, also sought new life as an environmental city.

Slowly, it has started to attract "green" businesses. Chattanooga, reports The Journal, has become a center for electric-vehicle research and production. It is recruiting environmental companies, and is trying to draw environmental conferences.

Far from being hostile to business interests, the efforts at rebirth have been driven by them. The city was taken off the EPA's list of worst polluters in 1984, after manufacturers invested in expensive pollution-control equipment and the business community put its weight behind the creation of a pollution-control bureau to enforce strict local regulations.

The city still has serious pollution problems. The effort to become an environmental paradise is a work in progress, officials concede, and economic salvation hinges on "green" being a growth industry. But a declining population trend has turned around, and tourists are coming to Chattanooga in greater numbers and staying longer to enjoy the greenways and new fresh-water aquarium along the Tennessee River.

In more ways than one, Chattanoogans are breathing easier these days.

by CNB