Smog Alert Ends in West Germany’s Ruhr Valley

Police removed all street barriers from the cities of the Ruhr Valley on Sunday after changing weather reduced pollution and health officials ended a smog alert in West Germany’s industrial heartland.

The alert, imposed by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia on Thursday, was lifted after a drop in levels of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants in the air.

As the drama and novelty of the alert wore off over the weekend, the political fallout accumulated.

The Greens party and most other environmentalist groups in the country issued statements saying the Ruhr “crisis” was the result of years of negligence in environment, energy and transport policy.

Members of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s conservative coalition, with an eye on the key state election due in May, accused the Social Democratic administration in North Rhine-Westphalia--West Germany’s most populous state, with 17 million inhabitants--of incompe tence.

The ruling Social Democrats asserted that if other regions had adopted the Ruhr’s strict standards, they too would have had smog alerts.

Sources in the state Health Ministry noted that the smog hit the Ruhr shortly after air-quality standards were tightened at the beginning of the year. Under the old standards, with different pollution indexes and higher thresholds, the Stage 3 alarm would not have been reached.