Captain Evan Clark, the Three Rivers Waterkeeper, takes a "nurdle patrol" crew out on the Ohio River, near Shell's new ethane cracker plant. Photo: Julie Grant / The Allegheny Front
You really can't make this stuff up. Anti-fossil fuelers aligned with Three Rivers Waterkeeper recently went on a boat trip on the Ohio River in Beaver County, PA, near where Shell is almost finished constructing a huge ethane cracker plant, to look for plastic "nurdles." The small plastic pellets or beads are what the Shell cracker will make when it's up and running. The antis want to establish a baseline for how many nurdles are found in the water now, before operations begin at the cracker plant, so they can visit later and test again to see if anything has spilled into the local waterway. We think it's fair to say the antis are also anti-plastics, given their comments. So the pictures of the plastics hunters accompanying the article are quite hilarious. All of the plastics hunters are kitted out in jackets, hats, glasses, hip boots, etc. that are made from the very plastics they are hunting.
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