Since 2012 Announcement Of Plastics Plant, Beaver County PA Losing Jobs, Residents And Tax Base

A Shell petrochemical plant in western Pennsylvania has failed to deliver many promised economic benefits to the surrounding county since it was announced more than a decade ago, according to an analysis released Friday by the Ohio River Valley Institute, a longtime critic of the project. Beaver County, northwest of Pittsburgh, has lagged both the state and the nation in measures including growth in gross domestic product, employment and number of businesses since the company unveiled plans to build the massive $14 billion plant in 2012, the report said.

The Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI) has looked at the economic ripple effects in prior reports. The new analysis for the first time included federal data on “market income”—which subtracts government payments to individuals and households, resulting in a measure of what people earn from their jobs and personal investments. The report also updated publicly available federal data that was used for the earlier reports in November 2021 and June 2023. All the latest data showed a continuation of trends identified earlier. The report said that “by nearly every measure of economic activity, today Beaver County is worse off than it was before the Shell plant was announced in 2012. Today, Beaver County has fewer jobs, fewer businesses, and fewer residents.”

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The predictions of an economic boom led the state under then-Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, to grant Shell a record tax break of $1.65 billion. The report’s co-author, Eric de Place, called the tax breaks a “sweetheart deal” for Shell but a “disaster” for Pennsylvania taxpayers. ORVI said the plant’s economic shortcomings should prompt state and local lawmakers to look more closely at whether to support a nearby “hydrogen hub,” a federally sponsored network of hydrogen producers and consumers that has also been opposed by the think tank on the grounds that it would cost a lot of money while doing little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Between 2012 and 2023, Beaver County’s GDP dropped by just over 12 percent, the report said, using data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The same measure of economic activity for the state and the country rose by 16 percent and about 29 percent, respectively. From 2012 through the beginning of 2024, the number of jobs tracked in the county by the federal Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages declined by just over 13 percent while rising by about 6 percent statewide and 16 percent nationwide, the report said. The number of businesses in the county dropped 4 percent between 2012 and 2023 while growing substantially in the state and nation, according to the same dataset, the report said. ORVI said it used the most recent statistics for all these comparisons. The county also lost about 5,000 people between 2012 and 2023, in contrast to gains in state and national populations. “Within months of operation, the facility exceeded its annual pollution limits; many families in the area have since fled because of the plant due to concerns about the consequences of the plant’s air, water, light and noise pollution,” the report said.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11022025/pennsylvania-petrochemical-plant-failed-to-boost-local-economy/