(Real)ationships

are born

Today, Monaca is home to a state-of-the-art Shell Polymers petrochemicals complex. But when Larry arrived in 2015 — one of the first five employees on site — it contained the remnants of the former Horsehead Corporation zinc smelting plant, which had operated there for approximately 80 years.

Larry and others assigned to the “Early Works” team were responsible for environmental remediation. That included capping and stabilizing the soil as well as addressing water runoff to manage soil contamination accrued over the previous eight decades.

Then it was time to prep the approximately 780-acre site for construction of the new facility.

“We moved a state highway, relocated power lines, built multiple temporary facilities and two docks,” Larry says. “We excavated and replaced seven million cubic yards of earth — that’s the equivalent of all the pyramids of Giza.”

Despite the enormous amount of work, the project was completed in two years, thanks to the efforts of the small but dedicated Early Works team.

“We were the first Shell employees based in this part of the country, so most of us didn’t have a local network or friends,” Larry says. “We hung out with one another, and that resulted in an amazing sense of team spirit. Even today, when I run into another Early Works veteran, we only have to mention one project or event and we’ll start smiling as the memories flood back.”

Uncovering the unexpected

For Larry, one of those events was more memorable than the rest.

Prior to the construction of the Horsehead plant in 1930s, the Monaca site had been a family homestead — established by pioneers exploring what were then the western outreaches of the United States.

“The family that settled here had crossed the Appalachian mountains, and many generations lived in this location,” Larry says. “They had a small family cemetery that became overgrown and forgotten during the Horsehead days. By the time we arrived on site, it was something of an urban legend.”

The Early Works team made a concerted effort to find the lost graves before any construction got underway. But neither soil-boring tests nor ground-penetrating radar turned up any signs of the cemetery.

Then one day, an employee of Larry’s stopped by a major excavation project underway along the river. Sitting on a newly dug pile of dirt was what appeared to be a human skull.

“We immediately shut down the entire site,” Larry says. “We called in the coroner, who confirmed it was human, and then began the proper process for excavating remains. We ended up finding multiple graves.”

The Early Works team was able to locate the family’s descendants and had the remains disinterred and reburied at the family mausoleum in nearby Beaver County. They also held a service to honor the deceased.

“That situation was so illustrative of Early Works in general,” Larry says. “We were constantly having to react to completely unexpected and sometimes even bizarre occurrences. But we were always focused on doing the right thing, whether it was an environmental issue or, in this case, a human issue.”