This page was last updated on April 23, 2017.
Cracker plant will destroy the area; Keith Ford (KF); Beaver County Times; April 21, 2017.
According to the letter, KF currently lives in “State College, [but is] formerly of Brighton Township.”
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“Beaver, Pa., will be a toxic wasteland when the Shell Chemicals ethane cracker plant goes online. It will not be the wonderful community of my youth.”
[RWC] Aren’t the DEP and the EPA supposed to make sure that doesn’t happen?
“Current residents should sell their homes ASAP. The value of their homes will plummet in this land of Trumpistan.”
[RWC] What did President Trump have to do with the cracker plant?
Thank goodness there wasn’t a zinc smelter and a coal-fired powerplant on the property from the 1930s until 2014. Oh wait, there was.
KF seems to have a short memory, apparently forgetting what stood on this property. From the 1930s until 2014, this property was the home of a zinc smelter, the largest in the U.S. at least as recently as the 1990s. In the interest of disclosure, I was fortunate to work at the smelter for three summers in the 1970s. St. Joe Minerals owned the facility at the time.
From mining through smelting, zinc production is a very dirty process even at its best. On top of that, this smelter had its own coal-fired power plant to help feed its huge electricity consumption. Those of us old enough remember the hillside across Route 18 from the smelter once was barren, made that way by the smelter’s air pollution. Eventually that pollution got under control and the vegetation returned.
From the drilling through refining, processing natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) is a zillion (hyperbole alert) times cleaner than zinc production, especially when we’re talking about a brand new refinery. Gas, NGLs, and refinery products that escape the process or are consumed by it represent lost profit, giving Shell a huge financial incentive to maximize energy efficiency and minimize pollution. Nothing is perfect, however.
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