My name is Hilary Starcher-O’Toole, and I’m the Executive Director of the Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community (BCMAC ) an environmental organization based in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.
I want to tell you what life looks like where I live.
We sit along the Ohio River, a place that has carried industry for generations. My grandparents watched steel rise here. My parents watched it fall. And now, my generation is watching petrochemical plants take its place. What does the future hold for our children and future generations?
The Shell Plastics plant in Beaver County — one of only five ethane cracker plants in the entire country — sits just a few miles from my children’s schools. Some of us watch flares from our bedroom windows and wonder if the size of the flame is normal or not. We can smell it when we step outside to let our dogs out and we question the safety of our children’s health when attending Friday night football and Saturday morning soccer games.
And now we are being forced to play a part in the race to build massive AI data centers. Let me be clear... I believe in progress. I believe that this AI race is happening and data centers will store, process and distribute data that we use daily.
But I don’t believe that this can’t be done in a way that is sustainable. Corporations and our own local leaders are pitching them as clean, smart and transformative. But the plan for our THREE data centers is to power them using new natural gas-fired power plants, locking us into decades more of fossil fuel dependence.
These proposed locations in Beaver County are of course located in environmental justice communities, those already overburdened with environmental pollution and health disparities. We’ll see increased pipelines, wells, and pigging stations, along with new ailments we’ve never had to worry about before. And we’ll undoubtedly be told we have nothing to worry about as they put these things in our backyards and neighborhoods, building parks nearby to give a sense of safety, knowing it’s just a matter of time before some of our families become grim statistics.
Let me say this clearly. AI data centers powered by gas are not innovation. It’s the same big oil propaganda we’ve heard before, dressed in shiny new language. It’s the same playbook... more gas, more emissions, more pollution... just with a different team.
If we truly believe in a just, sustainable future, then AI cannot be powered by extraction. The intelligence we need is collective. It’s the wisdom of communities demanding that progress doesn’t poison them. And we need leadership that understands that the future of innovation must also be the future of justice.
We have options: solar, wind, and water-powered energy — clean, reliable sources that already exist and can sustain our communities without sacrificing our health. Water has always been our source of strength in Beaver County. It carried the steel, it carried the barges, and now it carries the stories of people fighting for their right to clean air and clean water. Why can’t we use it again?
In Beaver County, we’ve carried enough. Our air, our water, our soil, our natural resources and our children deserve better. And as we stand here today, we are saying clearly — no more fossil-fueled futures. The power of tomorrow must be clean, renewable, and community-driven, because we refuse to let technology become just another pipeline for pollution.