The state Department of Environmental Protection has slapped Beaver County’s Shell ethylene cracker plant with a third violation notice because the agency said Shell again surpassed pollution emission limits.
The sprawling, multibillion-dollar plant along the Ohio River opened in November.
In an email to Shell dated Monday, DEP officials said Shell violated rolling 12-month emission standards in both November and December.
Shell is restricted from emitting more than 516.2 tons of volatile organic compounds and 328.5 tons of nitrogen oxide, according to the DEP. In November, the cracker plant emitted 716.6 tons of volatile organic compounds. In December, the plant emitted 741.5 tons of volatile organic compounds and 345.4 tons of nitrogen oxide.
Shell Polymers Monaca, the plant’s official name, is a first-of-its-kind facility in Pennsylvania. It includes an ethylene cracker that uses ethane, a natural gas product, to produce polyethylene, a common type of plastic, the DEP said on its website.
Shell could face a civil penalty of $25,000 per day for each violation, according to state law.
Shell did not reply to numerous requests for comment.
The DEP’s violation notices are not good enough for Anais Peterson, a volunteer with the environmental group Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community.
“It’s unacceptable to think Shell … will pay to pollute Beaver County,” Peterson told the Tribune-Review. “The (violation notices) are important, but they don’t fix the pollution. They don’t take pollutants out of people’s bodies and out of the air.”
Peterson said she also is concerned about whether pollutants from the cracker plant are exacerbated in Beaver and Allegheny counties by emissions from U.S. Steel in the Mon Valley, and by pollutants spewed from the Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
“We’re just seeing this onslaught of fossil-fuel pollution,” she said.
Earlier this week, unrelated to the violations, Shell said on Facebook that flaring occurred at the plant site for much of Monday afternoon. Flaring happens when the burning of hydrocarbons results in flames pouring out of one of the facility’s seven cracking furnaces. Monday’s flaring sent plumes of black smoke into the sky.
A malfunction report on what caused that flaring was not available Thursday.
