Pennsylvania Spent Big on a ‘Petrochemical Renaissance.’ It Never Arrived.

Captain Evan Clark holds a jar containing nurdles recovered from Pennsylvania waterways. Nurdles are tiny, pre-production plastic pellets that have become a common source of water pollution. Photos by Audrey Carleton.

When Captain Evan Clark steers his boat along the rivers that cut through and around Pittsburgh, he does so because he loves it, but also because he’s on a mission.

A self-proclaimed “river rat,” Clark lives on a houseboat on the Allegheny and works with the environmental nonprofit Three Rivers Waterkeeper. His main duty: prowling southwestern Pennsylvania’s waterways to monitor pollution from both new and legacy industrial facilities that the region has lived with for more than a century.