Mon Valley leaders ponder cracker plant impacts
Robert Griffin, foreground, is the new executive director of the Redevelopment Authority of Washington County.
Dennis Davin, secretary of the state Department of Community and Economic Development, left, and Donora Mayor Don Pavelko meet after a panel discussion Monday.
DONORA – Royal Dutch Shell may be building more than an ethane cracker plant in Beaver County. It could be rebuilding towns.
“We think the Beaver County plant will provide opportunities to bring other companies here,” said Dennis Davin, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.
Davin was in the Donora Borough Building Monday morning, leading a 19-member roundtable discussion on the economic impacts the petrochemical facility could have throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania and parts of West Virginia and Ohio. And the effects could be positive and formidable, as the ethane cracker process – the basis for plastics manufacturing – requires a lengthy supply chain partnership. More manufacturing firms, more jobs.
“This is probably the biggest redevelopment project in Pennsylvania in the last 50 years,” Davin said. “If things are working right and we do what we need to do, this can have a tremendous benefit.”
The panel was dominated by community and business leaders in the Mon Valley, where industry and manufacturing have been wracked by closures over the past three decades, and where many communities have declined. Those leaders stoked a spirited 90-minute discussion with an undercurrent that was a mix of hope and frustration. Blighted buildings – having enough money to demolish them, having enough to then rebuild – was a major concern.
“The problem with blight is there are so many out-of-state owners,” Donora Mayor Don Pavelko said. “Some make minimum tax payments. We need help from legislators to change laws on properties. Some properties are sitting for decades and we can’t do anything.”
Addressing this issue is key.
Jamie Protin, president of the Mon Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce, said there can be “a big difference between blight and a vacant building. You can have a vacant building that looks great. You just need someone to take that opportunity.”
Davin, former Allegheny County development director, reinforced those sentiments. “I’m a proponent of demolition, but selective demolition,” he said. “But you have to do something (with the property).”
As a case study, he referred to Braddock, a Mon Valley steel town that has experienced an impressive downtown revitalization. “They were tearing everything down and not building,” he said. “People were tired of that. Then they started building, and look what has happened there.”
Education is another key if this part of the Valley is to benefit from the Potter Township cracker 50 to 70 miles north, along the Ohio River. That endorsement, not surprisingly, came from a school board president.
“Unless there’s an educational component, employers won’t want to come here,” said Joe Grata, leader of the Belle Vernon Area board. “If the skills are taught and jobs are created with a corresponding need for those skills, it’s a symbiotic relationship.’
Grata added that, currently, “a lot of students get training, but we don’t have these jobs here.”
The cracker plant is far from reality, of course. Construction is projected to begin about a year from now, with completion sometime next decade. It will be the first cracker built outside of the Gulf Coast is more than 20 years.
That timeworn real estate maxim – “Location, Location, Location” – is one reason Beaver County was selected. The 400-acre site, off the Beaver Valley Expressway, is conveniently near four modes of transportation: water, highways, rail and air. So are the Mon communities.
Ethane is the preferred byproduct of a cracker plant. Ethane, propane and butane are natural gas liquids found in some natural gas products. Interstate 79 is generally regarded as the demarcation line between wet gas (west of I-79) and dry (east). Ethane mainly comes from wet gas.
Those NGLs are separated – “cracked” – before ethane is sent to the cracker, where its molecules are separated and rearranged to create ethylene, the feedstock for plastic and other products.
This was one of a series of panel discussions Davin has led in Southwestern Pennsylvania ahead of construction of the $6 billion Shell plant. “We want to find out what people are prioritizing,” he said.
Enhancing the Valley was at the top Monday.