“When we turn the lights on at the Shell plant, you will no longer recognize Beaver County.”

Although the preceding sentence is in quotes, it is, to be more precise, more of a close paraphrase than a verbatim quote. It has wrung in my ears for numerous years, having first heard something close to those words at a community meeting convened by Shell at the Aliquippa High School some five or so years ago.

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Lots of water has traveled under lots of bridges since I first heard that sentiment expressed. When first I heard this voiced ― and as Shell representatives intended the phrase to be heard ― the idea was that our communities would, thanks to Shell’s investment, be transformed into prosperous and overflowing sites of human flourishing.

I can actually remember seeing a map passed around by community leaders around this time. It was a graphic that had the cracker plant at its center with a number of concentric circles drawn around it. These circles were drawn at various intervals. A radius was placed at the 1-mile mark around the plant, the 5-mile mark, the 10-mile mark, and so on. At a progressively larger scale, the intent of the map was to show the economic impact that the plant would have, with varying intensity and in different ways, from the East Coast all the way to Detroit. If my memory serves correctly, the map suggested that this facility would substantially affect the economic landscape for at least a 500-mile radius.

Let me just remind you one more time that Beaver County ― lowly, passed over, disinvested, unfairly left behind Beaver County ― was at the center of this map. It was Beaver County that was supposed to serve as the flash point for this new era of prosperity and hope, transformation and progress, rebirth and resurgence. This was, in one way or another, the spirit of Shell’s early pitch to any and everyone who would listen.

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Perhaps not at all surprising, Shell had very little work to do to turn this ember of perceived hope into an inferno of positive messaging from all angles of society. Politicians, businesspeople, educators, community leaders, clergy — the list of individuals who lined up to share in and publicly rehearse this story of perceived inevitable hope and progress was endless, wide, deep, and continually replenished. An economic and cultural revolution was taking place, or so we thought. And, once THAT seed was planted, we were perfectly poised to water, prune, chase the bugs away, build a fence around what was growing, and keep any dissenters at bay.

To continue the metaphor of a harvest, Beaver County now finds itself in a season where we must contend with the fruit we have planted, nurtured and championed. By year’s end, the proverbial lights will be turned on at the Shell cracker plant. And light, as it does by nature, illuminates and brings into focus that which was once imperceptible.

Back in 2020, in anticipation of the turning on of Shell’s lights, seven leaders from western Pennsylvania traveled to the Gulf Coast region in Louisiana. The trip, which was self-funded out of RiverWise’s unrestricted organizational budget, was intended to help community leaders better prepare for what they would face when the lights came on. We wanted to share our experience to provoke honest, wide-ranging conversations and mobilize greater citizen action in southwestern PA. And we wanted to elevate and learn from the experiences of people living alongside petrochemical facilities in Louisiana.

COVID-19 understandably slowed us down a bit, and along the way, the project also became far more expansive and instructive than we ever expected. Ultimately, along with local filmmaker Christopher Padgett, we turned our experience, into a feature-length documentary film. We began screening the film last week. We are now actively and widely collecting data about community responses to the film. We are working toward developing a curriculum that can accompany the documentary.

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In the near future, we will be planning additional collaborative projects and campaigns with a growing list of individuals, organizations and networks who are responding to the issues raised in the film. And we will be connecting people to organizations, information and resources that can inspire them and help mobilize them toward strategic action.

There are a ton of open questions about what will happen when Shell “turns the lights on” in the coming months. Stakeholders all around the region are wondering what happened to that promised 500-mile transformation. Business owners are wondering if they will need to shut down now that 7,000 temporary employees have moved on to the next project. Community leaders wonder why the promised population boom for Beaver County has not panned out as expected. Our neighbors wonder why so few of us know any of the 600 workers who will be employed at the facility, and why we don’t often see them moving to Beaver County, enrolling their kids in our schools, or contributing to our local tax base. Developers and real estate agents wonder why six or seven years have brought so little “downstream investment” to the region. Many of us wonder what things will smell like, sound like and taste like once the lights come on, or if we will truly be cared for and safe as has been suggested.

It is indisputable that Shell’s promised regional transformation has not occurred as many envisioned. That may turn out to be a merciful failure for the health of our region, as it may ultimately mean less pollution, less extractive activity and less risk for future economic collapse rooted in unsustainable growth and rapidly changing global market conditions. That being said, I do agree that in the time since Shell first set foot in Beaver County, many of our communities, organizations, and residents have indeed become increasingly unrecognizable. And they are becoming less and less recognizable with each passing day.

Not all of us are changing. And we are certainly not being transformed at the same pace. But, slowly, and sometimes imperceptibly, many of us are coming to realize that the issues surrounding a $7 billion facility like Shell is building are far more complicated than had been conveyed. We have learned that lots of people have deeply conflicting opinions. We have come to understand that we have choices to make about what we want for our future. We are beginning to appreciate that it’s OK ― even necessary — to ask hard questions and demand transparent answers and accountability. We are slowly realizing that industry is not, never was, and never will be the kind of messiah for whom we have hoped. We are gaining confidence in saying out loud that running a petrochemical facility in our community is not doing us some kind of benevolent favor.

It is, instead, an unspeakable responsibility, with no acceptable margin for error. Perhaps less common, though no less important, we are coming to terms with the fact that Shell has not always lived up to its stated promises in other communities. And, when these promises are not kept, the most vulnerable members of a community are almost always those who bear the burden of such missteps, opportunistic decisions and short-sighted vision.

We have many more hard lessons to learn together. We must continue to be transformed.

Many of the things described above that we must learn are thoughtfully and publicly highlighted in “Boom and Bust.” We would love it if you would check out http://www.getriverwise.com to learn more. Once there, you’ll find a red banner at the top of the page that will provide information about how to attend a screening and keep the conversation going.

So, come on out and see if you, too, can help make Beaver County unrecognizable along with us. We suspect that you’ll be glad you did.

Daniel Rossi-Keen, Ph.D., is the co-owner of eQuip Books, a community bookstore in Aliquippa and the executive director of RiverWise, a nonprofit employing sustainable development practices to create a regional identity around the rivers of Beaver County. You can reach Daniel at daniel@getriverwise.com.