Beaver County

Maps of the majority of natural gas pipelines in Pennsylvania are not readily available to the public. That includes the pipeline that exploded last week in Beaver County, demolishing one home and forcing dozens of people to evacuate.

The Department of Labor has fined a power plant operator and an engineering company for a toxic gas exposure that left two contractors dead last August in Beaver County.

Pennsylvania State Police say they're searching the Aliquippa City Building as part of a grand jury investigation.

An umbrella group for 140 Presbyterian churches is calling for a halt to construction of a planned $6 billion petrochemical, or ethane cracker, plant in western Pennsylvania.

A public health researcher delivered a dire warning on Monday during a panel on the implications of the planned Royal Dutch Shell ethane cracker plant in Beaver County.

"When we allow industry to get way out in front of public health and environmental oversight, we end up counting bodies,” said Dr. Brian Schwartz of the Geisinger Center for Health Research in Montour County.

Beaver County announced Monday it is suing for millions of dollars in damages from opioid manufacturers,  drug distributors and physicians.

The civil suit claims 23 drug companies and doctors led consumers to believe that opioids were not addictive and the county spent taxpayer dollars responding to hundreds of deaths and overdoses.

Two workers died and four others were injured in an accident at a Pittsburgh-area coal-fired power plant late Tuesday.

Shell Chemical Appalachia has reached a settlement agreement with two environmental groups that had challenged the air permit for its new petrochemical plant being built near Pittsburgh.

Several Pennsylvania newspapers will be under new management this summer. 

GateHouse Media, a behemoth conglomerate overseen by New Media Investment Group, is slated to finalize purchase of The Beaver County Times, Ellwood City Ledger, The Bucks County Courier Times, The Intelligencer (Doylestown), the Burlington County (New Jersey) Times and Calkins Digital in June.

For the first time, shoppers at farmers markets around the region can grab some whiskey with their watermelon. Due to a 2016 change in state laws, distilleries, breweries and meaderies are able to sell their products in Pennsylvania farmers markets and food expos.

Shell Chemicals has purchased land in Beaver County's Potter Township near the site where the company has proposed the construction of an ethane cracker plant.

The Beaver County Times reports Shell paid $6.5 million for its latest acquisition of 13.7 acres along state Route 18.

A portion of the land once housed the industrial insulation company VersiTech. The purchase of that land was the last big domino to fall in Shell's plan for the proposed plant.

Shell now owns nearly every parcel on the southern side of Rt. 18 between Interstate 376 and Raccoon Creek.

Rent abatement, housing renovations and new affordable housing construction projects could be on the agenda if City Council approves a tax increase worth an estimated $10 million.

In 2010, at the height of the recession, the Community College of Allegheny County West Hills Center saw a spike in demand for its welding program, so officials added a late-night session. 

The 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. class booked quickly, but was only offered the one year.

Now the school is seeing demand for the class spike again and will offer midnight welding in the fall.

The oil giant Shell on Tuesday gave the final go-ahead for construction of a major petrochemical complex in western Pennsylvania where ethane from the Marcellus and Utica shales will be used to make ethylene for the manufacture of plastics.

The long-awaited multi-billion-dollar plant will be built in Potter Township, Beaver County, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, Shell said in a statement from its unit, Shell Chemical Appalachia LLC.

A Beaver County scrap metal facility has been temporarily shut down while the state investigates how radioactive materials there were put through a metal shredder.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection began its investigation of PSC Metals late Tuesday. Officials were alerted after metal that had been processed at the Beaver Falls facility and then shipped to three facilities in Ohio tripped a radioactivity monitor at one of the sites in Ohio.