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00000176-e6f7-dce8-adff-f6f770520000The Allegheny Front is a radio program covering environmental issues in Western Pennsylvania. The Allegheny Front began in 1991 and continues to serve the community as the most insightful source of local and regional environmental news and information on the radio. The program explores environmental issues affecting the community through stories, interviews, news, and commentaries.

How One Woman Took on Shell to Save Her Louisiana Town

Reid Frazier
/
The Allegheny Front

In June 2012, Pennsylvania officials flew to Louisiana to visit a couple of petrochemical plants owned by Shell, a company they were about to give big economic incentives to build a plant in Beaver County, Pa.

But they didn’t visit Margie Richard, who once lived in Norco, but now lives outside New Orleans.

If they had, they would have gotten another story about Shell’s operations here, a story about toxic emissions, industrial accidents, and how a very determined school teacher brought one of the largest companies in the world to the negotiating table.

Norco’s history is a window into the chemical industry’s sometimes rocky relationship with its host communities along the Mississippi River. And it may offer clues to how ‘fenceline’ communities near plants could manage their relationships with an industry that is expanding to take advantage of the natural gas boom.

Read more of this report on the website of our partner The Allegheny Front.