Dow flies to Baton Rouge after a week of legal and regulatory pressure at its Texas complex

Dow flew from Texas Gulf Coast Regional Airport to Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport on June 7, a 39-minute hop aboard its Bombardier CRJ-900, N892D. The aircraft, unusually large for a corporate fleet at 90 seats, touched down just before 11 p.m. local time, capping a day that began with a flight from Michigan.

The short hop lands the same week the Texas Attorney General's office is pursuing a lawsuit against Dow subsidiary Union Carbide, alleging hundreds of water pollution violations at Dow's 4,700-acre Seadrift complex, per a February filing in Travis County District Court texastribune.org. Separately, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is weighing a Dow permit amendment that would effectively legalize discharges of plastic pellets into waterways feeding San Antonio Bay, a move environmental groups call unprecedented texastribune.org.

N892D has made multiple round trips between Baton Rouge and the Houston-area airport since May 5, a route mirroring Dow's supply chain between its Louisiana operations and the Gulf Coast manufacturing corridor. Dow uses the CRJ-900 to move engineering teams between its sprawling chemical plants; this week, those teams are likely focused on the Seadrift complex, where the company faces both a legal deadline and a regulatory decision that could reshape how plastics waste is managed on the Texas coast.