Dow St. Charles Operations, Louisiana

Dow St. Charles Operations is a 2,000-acre chemical complex located 14 miles up the Mississippi from New Orleans, and next door to a nuclear power plant. Some of the products produced there include ethylene, polyethylene, polyethylene glycol, ammonia, acrylic acid, latex, and acetylene, which in turn are used to make plastics, insecticides, antifreeze, brake fluid, detergents, and paints, among other industrial and consumer products. It was formerly two plants; Union Carbide Taft, and the Star Petrochemical Plant, but when Dow bought Union Carbide in 2001, the plants were integrated and renamed Dow St. Charles Operations. It is located along petrochemical alley, one of the nation's largest industrial corridors, with plastics and chemical plants lining both banks of the Mississippi River, between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.