From Blue to Green: Transforming Jobs Around the World
Chapter 3: Pittsburgh Goes Green
Sippey’s father, Meade J. Sippey, held on, working for LTV Steel at Mill 19 for 32 years before operations shut down in 1999. Despite the haze over the city from the polluting mills, Tim Sippey had grown up in awe of his father’s work.
He recalls one late night, after receiving his driver’s license and wanting to put it to good use, picking up his dad from the night shift at Mill 19. “I’ll never forget," he says. “It was dark, it was real smoky, and with all the lights from the mill lit up — it looked kind of like Gotham City."
Background photo credit: © AP Images
Nevertheless, when Sippey was ready to start his own career, his father counseled him to pursue a new path: construction work.
“I went and talked to my dad, and he said, ‘Well, there’s only two more mills left in Pittsburgh, but we live in a city of bridges,’” Sippey recalls. And that is why he spent much of his career building bridges.
By the time Sippey was launching his own career, a movement to clean up industry waste was underway. Pittsburgh had become one of the most polluted cities in the world. As early as the 1940s, environmental groups worked to pass legislation to lessen the smoke spewing into Pittsburgh’s air.
And in subsequent years, state and federal laws helped spur a shift toward green jobs.
Now, as fate would have it, Sippey is back at his father’s job site, working on Pittsburgh’s 21st century renaissance. He knows his late father would have been interested in the work his crew is attempting. He would have been excited to see the city’s transformation into a renewable-energy hub.
Coming up next:
Chapter 4: Mill 19’s Clean Revolution
Tim and his crew give new meaning to the phrase “learning on the job” as they begin installing the largest array of solar panels in the United States across the 1,200-foot long roof of Mill 19. Read Chapter 4: Mill 19’s Clean Revolution.
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