When Jackie Shock-Stewart moved to Ohio from Pennsylvania, she felt immeasurable relief. Leaving behind the Shell ethane cracker plant and petrochemical pollution that had taken over her former hometown, Beaver, her family’s health had been given a fresh chance.
“I had adapted to high-level stress. I didn’t realize how much tension I was carrying until we were away—my mind and also my body felt different,” she recalls.
Still, she also mourned the loss of her life in Beaver, where she and her husband, Matt, moved as newlyweds in 2014. “It’s so quaint with a darling Main Street, lots of little parks, and historic houses,” she says.
They never planned to leave this home, where they built forest paths on their land, made friends, and had three kids. But fears about the possible health impacts of the “behemoth” plastic-making plant that broke ground in 2018 and became operational in 2021 forced their hand.
TELL PRESIDENT BIDEN AND EPA: PROTECT PEOPLE FROM PLASTICS INDUSTRY POLLUTION
Growing fear
At first, Jackie was more curious about the Shell plant than concerned. She learned that cracker plants don’t make crackers, as her sister-in-law initially thought. They take ethane that has been separated out from drilled or fracked fossil fuels and turn it into tiny pellets. These building blocks for plastics manufacturing get shipped around the world.
But soon worry about petrochemical plant pollution kept her up at night. She felt alone with her fears because articles in local newspapers extolled the virtues of the plant—it would supposedly generate jobs and rejuvenate the area. “Shell really influenced community perspective,” she says.
Jackie ignored this marketing hype, delving into evidence-based scientific resources instead, straining sometimes to interpret confusing data about air pollutants and emissions at comparable cracker plants. “When I got to the nitty gritty of what it meant on the ground, I became really, really worried. It’s such an obvious public health and environmental concern.” She suffered, overwhelmed with uncertainty and dread.
Marital strife and maple syrup
By 2020, Jackie concluded her family had to move. It was a drastic decision, but projection maps of where emissions from the plant would concentrate showed her kids’ future elementary school in an impacted “yellow” zone. Her husband wasn’t immediately on board, wishfully thinking their home was upwind enough from the petrochemical plant pollution. “When we tried to talk, it raised tension between us. We communicate well, but many tears were shed,” she says.
“It’s deeply unsettling for any parent to have to wonder if where they live, where their children go to school and play outside, is harming their health imminently or down the line,” says Elizabeth Bechard, who leads Moms Clean Air Force’s work on climate change and mental health. Home should be a place of refuge and safety. But Beaver and its petrochemical plant pollution wasn’t any longer.
In summer 2021, a maple syrup odor emanating from the plant wafted through the community. “I had an olfactory cue I could smell, but what about the things I can’t smell? We can’t help what we are breathing in, it’s affecting us, and the kids. Their tender little bodies are more vulnerable,” Jackie recalls.
Acceptable risk and survivor’s guilt
After the odor incident, Jackie’s husband agreed to move, but only a few miles away. “I was still not OK with that. It was a gradual process of coming to an understanding about what was acceptable risk,” she says. Then an unexpected new job for her husband came up in Kent, Ohio. “That made the decision for us; it wasn’t, ‘We are trying to get away.’ There was something to go toward.”
When Jackie’s family left Beaver, so did two other families they were close to.
But not everyone had similar means to leave, or even wanted to, including a friend with deep generational roots in Beaver. “My heart aches for her. She recognizes the risk. She said, when I was little, we would wear white dresses to church and come home gray from coal. Now there is this new threat that will do other bad things. She was aware yet rooted in place,” Jackie says.
Moms’ own Ohio River Valley Field Organizer, Rachel Meyer, is also staying put in Beaver County, at least for now. She lives eight miles from the Shell plant, but if she lived as close as Jackie and her family did, she would also relocate. “I suppose I’m taking a stand. I’m not willing to leave the area where I have family members, and unfortunately, our entire region is threatened by petrochemical build-out. If we move, it may follow us. I choose to stay and fight,” she says.
It’s complicated staying put. Rachel feels strongly no family should have to live under constant threat of petrochemical plant pollution, having their mental and physical health sacrificed by continuing to live in their home, and also she has days of feeling down, knowing her air is not as clean as it should be.
It’s emotionally complicated in Ohio too. Jackie has survivor’s guilt. She occasionally wonders if she abandoned her community. “I know this information. I should stay and fight and be part of the movement. That was part of my multifaceted internal battle: Where is my responsibility first and foremost?”
Ultimately, Jackie decided her responsibility lay with her kids, who were seven, five, and three at the time of the move. They’re thriving in Ohio but still talk about the “bad factory” and what it was doing to the earth and their friends back in Beaver.
“I am grateful we are here, but I think about everyone and the effects and this is just one instance,” says Jackie. “Places like Beaver are nationwide and worldwide.”
Learn more about Moms’ work on petrochemical pollution.
TELL PRESIDENT BIDEN AND EPA: PROTECT PEOPLE FROM PLASTICS INDUSTRY POLLUTION