Shell’s petrochemical plant in Beaver County began operating in late 2022, and since then has racked up a number of air quality violations, leading to a $10 million penalty and a settlement agreement with the state. Environmental groups have been concerned about the health impacts of the ethane cracker since before it was even built along the Ohio River, and pushed for regulators to include fenceline air monitoring along the perimeter of the site.
Now the nonprofit, Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community, or BCMAC, is providing a new tool for area residents to learn about air pollution incidents from the cracker plant and other industrial sites in real time. It’s a webpage on their site called Eyes on Air. The Allegheny Front talked with BCMAC executive director Hilary Starcher-O’Toole about it.
LISTEN to the interview
Kara Holsopple: What is the Eyes on Air webpage and how does it work?
Hilary Starcher-O’Toole: The Eyes on Air webpage is designed for residents of Beaver County, but anyone can go on and visit and see the air quality in any five locations where we have our real-time air monitors placed. It allows residents living in the county to get a feel for what their air quality is if they have any concerns. Or maybe if they smell something that they think is off, and they’re concerned.
It’s undeniable that we have a large petrochemical facility sitting in the county, but we also have some other concerning facilities that we hear about in the neighborhoods. And we wanted to make sure that we were giving people the confidence that if they opened their windows, they’d know what the air quality was outside.
Kara Holsopple: What kind of data do the monitors provide?
Hilary Starcher-O’Toole: The monitors provide data on PM 2 .5. They also provide readings on ozone and NO2. We also have a weather station located at one of our monitors. We couldn’t afford to do it on all of them, so we chose one. That will provide the confidence that we know which direction the wind is blowing.
They can either report it or investigate it further or maybe just close their windows until they see an improvement in the air quality. With our asthma rates in Beaver County being as high as they are, we know that ozone is linked to asthma, and it can cause chronic bronchitis. PM2 .5 is pretty much the same. These tiny particles, because they’re smaller than a grain of sand, can travel deep into your lungs and cause some pretty severe damage.
A screenshot of the air monitoring data on BCMAC’s Eyes on Air webpage, March 14, 2025.
Kara Holsopple: Tell me a little bit about the monitors themselves. Where they are and where they came from.
Hilary Starcher-O’Toole: They’re state-of-the-art. We purchased them from a company in New Zealand called Airqual, and we worked with a partner of theirs, a distributor of theirs in the United States called Wilbur Technologies. They flew down from Vermont and helped us install our first monitor.
They’re located in five different areas in Beaver County. We co-located one along the Ohio River in Beaver. It sits right next to the Department of Environmental Protection’s monitor. They have the same monitor, but they bought theirs a few years ago, and that really set the bar for us in terms of what we wanted when we were purchasing these air monitors.
They’re designed to be self-reliant and self-sufficient. We only have to go out once every six months to check and make sure that the calibrations are still working the way that they should. We have individual handheld gas monitors that we just go out and test for ourselves.
But monthly, behind the scenes, we paid a little bit more money to have AirQual run what’s called a MOMA every month. They’re monitoring and checking for our calibration settings against some of the other air monitors in the area, just to make sure that our readings aren’t coming off kind of funky compared to theirs, or out of the ordinary. We get a report once a month from them showing that has been done.
We’ve had a lot of support from the community in terms of the signup sheets and people who wanted to be involved. We were really lucky that we had our choice of where to place these monitors based on community needs and the feedback that we received from the community.
Kara Holsopple: How was the new monitoring funded?
Hilary Starcher-O’Toole: All of these air monitors are funded through a Shell mitigation fund. That is an agreement between the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Shell Chemicals LLC. They received violations, and the DEP decided that $5 million should go to Potter Township and they should be allowed to decide how they want to spend their money. And $5 million would go to a separate fund that any nonprofit organization located and registered in Beaver County could apply for, but there were some stipulations.
It had to be a project that enhanced or improved the quality of life for Beaver County residents. They had a panel of experts sit on a board – it was a very formal process. We had to apply through the Pittsburgh Foundation [which also funds The Allegheny Front]. And there was a really strict character count of 5,000 characters. I don’t know if you’ve ever written a grant, but that’s not a lot of space to put information. And so that piece was a challenge.
Kara Holsopple: So how can people using the site interpret the data? What do they see when they go to the page?
Hilary Starcher-O’Toole: I think what we try and do a lot of times is just fit so much information because we think if someone’s coming to the website, we really want to give them everything. We want them to know what’s going on. I think when you land on the page, the big takeaway is this is real-time. These monitors are updating within every 10 minutes.
You are able to click on the different locations of these air monitors. So if you’re closer to one or if you’re going across, let’s just say the Ambridge Bridge, and you smell something and you think you want to check something out, you can go on there and click on it.
The readings are, again, very easy to understand. Green is good; yellow is moderate. Orange is potentially unhealthy for sensitive groups, like maybe people who have existing underlying conditions such as asthma. Red is unhealthy. Purple is very unhealthy. Maroon is hazardous.
We didn’t decide off the cuff to do it this way. This is exactly how the National Ambient Air Standards work, and we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.
Kara Holsopple: How do you hope residents will use the data there?
Hilary Starcher-O’Toole: I hope residents will use this to expand their learning. Before I started in this position, I didn’t even know that I should be concerned about the air quality around here. Some of the facilities around here had some chemical incidents before, but I always felt like I didn’t need to worry because I’d be alerted, and someone would tell me when I needed to worry.
What I found out is that there is a gap. We are trying to fill that gap. Regardless of whether organizations and facilities are trying their best, mistakes still happen and emergency responders don’t always know.
This could be the difference between a very severe asthma attack for someone – one of my children has asthma. I know that I sincerely appreciate this.
I used to live in downtown Monaca, a lot of pollution just from the trucks and everything going by, but also the barges and the trains. And then if you add it, you know, just one other element of pollution, my child could, if we had the windows open, it could just tip him over into that space of a trip to the emergency room. So I hope that residents use it like that.
I hope they figure out how it applies to their lives. We’re not out to prove anything to anyone. We’re not out here to blame. We’re not out here to try and imply that one facility is causing all of this air pollution. We are honestly just here to tell residents and talk to them about what’s in the air.
Hilary Starcher-O’Toole is the executive director of Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community.
