  (abridged) Following our previous work on metal abundances of a double damped
Ly-alpha system with a line-of-sight separation ~2000 km/s (Ellison & Lopez
2001), we present VLT UVES abundances of 3 new systems spanning a total of
\~6000 km/s at z~2.5 toward the southern QSO CTQ247. These abundances are
supplemented with echelle observations of another `double' damped Ly-alpha
system in the literature. We propose a definition in terms of velocity shift of
the sub-class 'multiple damped Ly-alpha system', which is motivated by its
possible connection with large-scale structure. We find that the abundance
ratio alpha/Fe is systematically low in multiple systems compared with single
systems, and with a small scatter. The same behavior is found in 2 more single
DLA systems taken from the literature that show evidence of belonging to a
galaxy group. After a careful investigation of possible sources of systematic
errors, we conclude that the low alpha/Fe ratios in multiple DLAs have a
nucleosynthetic origin. We suggest that they could be explained by reduced star
formation in multiple damped Ly-alpha systems, possibly due to environmental
effects.
