With its huge coal reserves, Shizuishan was an ideal place to relocate heavy industrial plants and starting in 1958, entire factories along with their workers started arriving from Shandong, Liaoning and other coastal provinces. Over the years, belching smoke mixed with dust and sand from the nearby desert to create horrendous air pollution. Waste material from coal mines and power stations was piled up in slag heaps. Lakes and wetlands became dumping grounds for household and industrial waste.

But in recent years the city has been making determined efforts to clean up its act. The city government has initiated 643 environmental protection projects. It has shut down 47 heavily polluting factories. The huge Da Wukou coal-fired power plant that dominates downtown Shizuishan's skyline will close next year. The city recycles more than 50 percent of its solid waste, has cut industrial waste water discharge by 43.8 percent, and soot emission by 39.4 percent. A new power plant being constructed out of town will recycle or sell most of its solid by-products – in the past they would have been dumped. Partly financed by investment from Singapore and using German and Russian technology, the plant will provide employment for 5,000 people when it goes into operation in 2012.