PLAQUEMINE - About $250 billion in new investments in Louisiana have been announced in the past couple of years, and a significant portion is in Iberville Parish.

While pickleball, a day at the pool, or a pair of Crocs might not immediately bring chemical plants to mind, the materials manufactured in Iberville Parish serve as key ingredients in dozens of everyday consumer goods.

"Produced at Dow in Plaquemine are polyolefin elastomers that go into Crocs that we all know and love," Blanche Gallagher, Director of Governmental and Regulatory Affairs and TJC Group, said.

Down the road in St. Gabriel, another facility plays a major role in the nation’s automotive fleet.

"The refrigerant produced at Orbia in St. Gabriel goes into 90% of the cars throughout the U.S., and that helps keep us cool in our vehicles during the summer," Gallagher said. "It's pretty cool to know that 90% of that is made right here in Iberville."

Dow has operated in Iberville since 1969. Today, 17 Environmental Protection Agency-regulated facilities operate along both sides of the Mississippi River, generating tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue for the parish.

"We are a very wealthy parish, and most of that is credited to our industry," Gallagher said. "This gives people an opportunity for lifelong careers that they may not get in other parishes."

Thousands of people are employed across the parish's industrial corridor, where manufacturing shows no signs of slowing down. Shintech recently announced a multibillion-dollar expansion in the area.

That industrial workforce drives the local economy beyond the plants' gates.

"I see a lot of them from Shintech, Westlake and Dow," Kyle Sam, a custodian at Uncle Earle's Cafe in Plaquemine, said. "If it weren't for the plants, we wouldn't have any business."

Sam, along with nearly everyone in town, has a connection to the facilities.

"A lot of people around here after high school, instead of going to college or something, start working at a plant to get a trade and make pretty good money, without having to go to college and get into debt and all that stuff," a local oil technician at LA 1 Oil and Lube Shop, Cody Breaux, said. "A lot of people around here like to work with their hands."

Those hands produce materials reaching far beyond South Louisiana with products you might use this holiday season, as Gallagher pointed out.

"Whenever you're decorating your Christmas tree and using your ornaments, remember TotalEnergies produces the polystyrene that goes into our ornaments," Gallagher said.