In the coming weeks, before the autumn chill sets in, teams of chimneysweeps will visit thousands of homes throughout Germany. But it's in the cities and towns of eastern Germany that they'll be most active.
In spite of the gradual switch by households from brown coal, or lignite, to gas as a source of energy and heating, there's still more than enough work for a profession immediately recognizable by the round white cotton hats, black uniforms and bicycles laden with long spiky brushes.But outside the cities of Leipzig or Dresden, Potsdam or Cottbus, there's another cleanup under way: the recultivation of Eastern Germany's giant brown coal open-cast mines spread over an area of 245,000 acres.
By the time the work is complete in 2002, the German government, which owns this land, will have spent more than $10.8 billion in transforming what was once a dusty, dark-brown landscape to green parks and artificial lakes.
The decision to embark on this ambitious program was made in 1992, two years after reunification. The government agreed to keep some of East Germany's brown coal fields operating, largely for political reasons.
Before 1990, more than 150,000 miners worked in the Laubag and Mibrag mines, which straddle the eastern German states of Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt and which supplied more than 65 percent of their output to industry.
There was concern that if all the mines were closed, the unemployment rate, currently an average 15.5 percent in the five eastern German states, would rise. Also, households were still using brown coal. The gradual switch to gas had not yet taken place.
The Laubag and Mibrag mines, which in 1991 had been placed under the control of the Treuhand, the agency charged with privatizing East German industry, were sold. A consortium led by Rheinbraun, a subsidiary of RWE, Germany's largest utility group, bought Laubag. NRG and Morrison Knudsen of the U.S. and Britain's PowerGen bought Mibrag.
Mines not being used by either company were to be included in the government's closure program and subsequently placed under the control of Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbau-Verwaltungsgesellschaft (LMBV), the company responsible for closing, cleaning up and recultivating the mines.
Closing the mines has entailed more than filling in land. It has required a sophisticated engineering plan specifically designed to prevent the surrounding areas from flooding.
When brown coal is mined, water has to be continuously pumped away to reduce the water levels in the lignite. Once the mining stops, the LMBV has had to find ways to continue to pump the water and drain it into specially constructed lakes.
LMBV engineers reckon it will take 50 years for the water to stabilize and find its natural level - one reason why they're so concerned that the current $1 billion set aside each year for the cleanup will be maintained.
"Managing the water is one of the most crucial aspects of our work," says Wolfgang Fritz, manager of LMBV.
Set up in 1995, LMBV has an even wider brief. It has to decide which subsidiaries of the mines are worth saving - for example, whether there's a future for the lignite briquette factories.
LMBV also must develop a long-term program for recultivation once the mines have been safely closed. In some of the early stages of the recultivation period, the LMBV has sown grass or crops.
Depending on the amount of chemical waste deposited in the landfills among the disused mines closed by the former Communist authorities before 1990, as well as the stability of the terrain, some of the land can be fit for sheep-grazing.
The LMBV has calculated it must clean up 95,000 acres of land, restore the water balance to 750,000 acres and decide how 180 square miles of uneven and often dangerous terrain can be recultivated.
Parallel with the cleanup is the government's special employment plan which keeps 16,000 former miners in work until the end of the decade through public subsidies at an annual cost of about $95,000 employee. Another 3,000 are permanently employed by LMBV.
The annual $1 billion cleanup and recultivation costs are shared by the federal government and the states, with the former financing three-quarters of the total costs.
But as the government embarks on its own cost-cutting programme, which envisages making budget savings of more than $33.7 billion next year, LMBV is concerned that financing for the temporary employment schemes, as well as the cleanup itself, might be cut, too.
Fritz says any financial cutbacks would have long-term damaging effects for the environment, besides adding to the high unemployment levels. The main concern is the water levels.
"We just can't afford to have flooding," he says. "This is a long-term, controlled process where there are few shortcuts."