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Thirty miles northwest of Pittsburgh in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, Royal Dutch Shell is preparing to build the largest petrochemical processing facility that our region has ever seen. Every day, Shell’s Ethane Cracker Plant will consume ethane from 88 million gallons of natural gas, much of it gained by hydraulic fracturing, and process it into ethylene, one of the major components of plastic products.

So far, the arrival of Shell and their plans to build this facility have been heralded as a savior for this low income area. The state, county, and municipal governments have rolled out the