Kickstart: The slow recovery

One bit of good news for the U.S. is that the biggest named storm in the Atlantic Ocean right now, Hurricane Larry, is expected to remain far offshore. And the National Hurricane Center says Mindy, a tropical depression, will bring rain and wind to southern Georgia and northern Florida, but it is tracking far south of the areas hurt by Hurricane Ida.

But the mess left behind by Ida is continuing to impact people and companies and the cleanup is slow. For plastics firms, the biggest concern continues to be the question of how long it will take to resume full production.

Dow Inc. said in a Sept. 8 update that its Plaquemine, La., site has begun bringing operations online, but full recovery will depend on full access to utilities and raw materials. At St. Charles Parish, La., Dow said it is "making progress" toward restarting but will not be able to set a "clear timeline for restart sequencies" until later this week.

And in an even bigger complication, Frank Esposito writes, Shintech Inc. has shut down its Freeport, Texas, plant due to a lack of feedstock. The closure will hit PVC production far beyond that one plant.

In total, sources told Frank that about 60 percent of U.S. PVC capacity is offline currently.

A Pennsylvania woman who embezzled more than $195,000 while she was controller of a family-owned firm has been sentenced to prison and ordered to pay restitution, but the company, Gateway Packaging Corp., has been forced out of business.

Victoria Mazur will spend two years in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

"From December 2012 until December 2017, she issued herself and her husband a total of approximately 189 fraudulent credit card refunds, totaling $195,063.80, through the company's point of sale terminal," the U.S. Attorney's office said. "Her thefts were so extensive, they caused the failure of the company, which is now out of business. In order to conceal her fraud, Mazur supplied the owners with false financial statements that understated the company's true sales figures."

Gateway President Ken Getty told the court the family had to sell the the firm's assets to a competitor and the building in Export, Pa., is up for sale.

"Twenty-five employees have to find other employment. Some have been successful, some have to take jobs at lesser pay rates, putting stress on their family situations. A few have yet to find employment," Getty said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Most of us in the U.S. and other first-world nations don't think very often about the water coming out of our faucets. But for many households, there are problems with wells running dry or water being tainted by chemicals, a nasty smell or taste.

For Jordan and Candice Vande Brakes, when they moved to Smithfield, Va., to be closer to family they discovered the shallow well on their property produced water that was cloudy and brown. Not wanting to expose their three young children to problems with the water quality, they spent two years buying gallons of water for everything but washing and gardening.

Now the Vinyl Institute has joined with nonprofits to install a deep well with water that is safe to drink. VI provided the 400 feet of PVC pipe to reach the fresh water.

Check out Catherine Kavanaugh's blog for more on the project.