Paul du Moulin

THE LOCALS SAID

The river that runs through the town was so dirty because of sewerage and the paper factory upriver, that it would be impossible to sit by it because of the horrendous smell. It would be covered in greasy lumps and foam and an oil like slick covering it. This was only fixed because of the building of the nuclear reactor which needed clean water to function. The dirty water problem was ‘fixed’ by diverting it away from the town and dumped in a series of lakes outside the town. The sediment was then allowed to settle out. Its hard to image what state these lakes would be in the future, though they look clean enough from a distance. 

Also to clean the water in the town river , pollution caused by the paper factory, the officials built a huge pipeline bypassing the dirty water from the factory past the town and dumping it down river.

There is great controversy with the reactor here as it is built in the ‘Chernoble’ plan. The communist government used the excuse that coal fired stations were too dirty and nuclear would be cleaner. They built their reactor but did not shut down the coal fired stations, keeping them going to sell the excess power abroad.

In fact the Austrians hate the reactor being where it is , just over their border, where if another Cheroble type meltdown happened would shower them with nuclear waste. The Czech government finds this quite amusing, and use the threat of melt down to gain funding from Austria for maintenance of the reactor.

The local officials would herd the population of the town into the central square, barring the way with barricades and armed police. there the officials would deliver long boring speeches to the trapped crowds. they would speak of 5 year plans and how many weapons they had sold to Iraq. Also the great benefits of Chernoble type nuclear reactors they would be building in their neighborhood. Nobody believed the officials though, they were empty words.

They also told me that the last communist leader was an object of fun. he espoused such a hardline doctrine that he was mercilessly ridiculed. It was made illegal to record his speeches in an attempt to hide his ineptitude. People went ahead anyway and communism fell soon afterwards. In the squares of each town there are big ugly buildings, all the same, with restaurant plastered on them. these were built by the communists for the people. The people looked on them with disgust and amusement.