Dow shuttles to Seadrift the week layoffs begin and a pollution suit moves forward

Dow flew from Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport to Texas Gulf Coast Regional Airport on June 16, a 58-minute hop that landed N892D, the company's Bombardier CRJ-900, at the doorstep of its Seadrift chemical complex. The flight arrived the same week Dow confirmed it had begun notifying roughly 4,500 employees of layoffs as part of its Transform to Outperform restructuring initiative, per reports from the Victoria Advocate and KFDM [victoriaadvocate.com](https://victoriaadvocate.com/2026/06/12/dow-confirms-workforce-cuts-amid-transformation-initiative/) [kfdm.com](https://kfdm.com/news/local/dow-begins-notifying-about-4500-workers-about-impending-layoffs). The workforce reductions follow a February lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General's office alleging hundreds of water pollution violations at Dow's Seadrift facility by subsidiary Union Carbide [texastribune.org](https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/18/texas-lawsuit-dow-chemical-plant-pollution-seadrift-paxton/).

The shuttle pattern is familiar: N892D has made at least five round trips between Baton Rouge and the Houston-area airport since early June, a route that mirrors Dow's supply chain between its Louisiana operations and the Gulf Coast manufacturing corridor. The aircraft's size — a 90-seat regional jet — is unusual for a corporate fleet, but Dow uses it to move engineering teams between its sprawling chemical plants. This week, those teams are likely focused on the Seadrift complex, where workers are being notified of layoffs and the company faces a legal deadline to clean up plastic pellet discharges and unauthorized wastewater releases.