Pipeline Spills, Whistleblowing & Why Shell is Facing Criminal Charges

Beaver County’s Shell cracker makes nurdles — those lentil-sized pellets that become our plastics — but the glowing, riverfront facility is just the part we can see. There’s a 97-mile underground pipeline that delivers its raw materials, and state investigators say its construction led to thousands of gallons of hazardous drilling mud spills in all three Pennsylvania counties it passes through. The Allegheny Front’s Reid Frazier explains why whistleblowers came forward, what the Attorney General’s office found, and how these 13 misdemeanor criminal charges could play out in court.
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