It is our privilege to work with our friends at Riverkeeper.

 VoiceYourself is pleased to highlight the mission, work and accomplishments of Riverkeeper, the environmental organization dedicated to the belief that it is the right of every citizen to enjoy our nation’s water resources. The Hudson Riverkeeper since its founding in1983 has doggedly pursued violators and polluters that turned the majestic Hudson River into a sewer for industrial waste. We commend Riverkeeper both for its commitment to involve citizen’s vigilance in the protection of waterways and for its leadership in establishing more than 100 allied Waterkeeper groups from Maine to Alaska. Among its many achievements, Riverkeeper has investigated and successfully prosecuted more than 300 environmental lawbreakers and violators. The Hudson is cleaner today than it was 50 years ago but the work continues. This tribute is well timed as the UN proclaims 2003 as the International Year of Freshwater. To learn more about their programs, what you can do and the people behind the remarkable achievements,

The spectacular Hudson River possesses an intricate ecology that supports an astonishing diversity of life. This river is a perfect metaphor for human’s love of nature and the insatiable growth for expansion to satisfy their needs. By the 1950s, the river was lined with factories dumping waste, turning it into one big sewer. The recovery and reclamation of the Hudson River began in the1960s, when one man, Fred Danback, who worked at the Anaconda Wire and Cable, began documenting the oil and sulfuric acid, copper filings that spewed out of that company and into the river. He then teamed up with Robert Boyle (author, angler) whose book described the riverkeeper system in Great Britain. Together in 1964, they founded the Hudson River Fisherman's Association, one of America’s first environmental organizations. They got the US Attorney’s office to prosecute Anaconda Wire and Cable by citing an old federal law that prohibited the dumping of industrial pollution into the country’s navigable waters. In the early 1970s, in a landmark environmental case, the company was fined a then unheard-of $200,000.

Today the passionate vision of a few has grown to include thousands. As corporate dumping continued Robert Boyle and his colleagues took steps to involve citizen patrols in the war against polluters. In 1983, the newly named Hudson Riverkeeper hired John Cronin, a former commercial fisherman and congressional aide, to patrol the Hudson full time. A new chapter emerged with Cronin steering the research vessel to record first hand accounts of violations. The following year Robert F. Kennedy Jr. came on board as its chief prosecuting attorney. In 1997, Kennedy and Cronin co-authored The Riverkeepers. It is described as “a dramatic, personal account of environmental activism and eloquent call to reclaim the most basic human right of all, the right to a safe environment.” The goals of the organization are as much to restore the river’s ecosystem, with particular emphasis on minimizing fish kills and water pollution, as they are to protect New York City’s drinking water supply; and improving public access to the Hudson River.

Over the years, the effective leadership of lawyers, boatmen, avid outdoorsmen and most recently the Executive Director Alex Matthiessen, who joined in August 2000, has won impressive victories bringing more than 200 violators to justice. “The last 30 years have taught us that the health of the river and of our communities is inextricably linked,” said Matthiessen, “Cleaning up the Hudson River has brought economic vitality back to the Hudson River Valley and enriched the lives of everyone living along the banks of this magnificent river...”

Riverkeeper continues to use the Clean Water Act to empower private citizens to act as enforcement agents and public advocates and to collect evidence and file lawsuits against polluters. They employ a variety of tools and strategies to identify problems, respond to citizen complaints, devise appropriate solutions and vigorously enforce environmental laws. Recently, the use of volunteer aerial patrols, including long time supporter Harrison Ford who pilots his own helicopter to gather evidence, have proven to be very effective.

But 30 years after the passage of the Clean Water Act and despite their progress, the Hudson still faces threats from polluters. Current state violations of the Clean Water Act include dumping industrial waste and raw sewage into the river, killing aquatic life by the millions due to antiquated power plants, destroying critical wetlands through over development, and threatening our drinking water with pollution from unregulated storm water runoff into our watershed. .

Kennedy and Matthiessen have been unrelenting in their efforts to prosecute hundreds of polluting violators, in the process creating landmark environmental legislation They successfully fought GE’s toxic legacy that includes millions of tons of PCBs dumped into the river all but destroying the Hudson’s once great fishing industry. In one of their earliest cases, John Cronin’s sleuthing led them to expose Exxon’s dirty practice of allowing their oil tankers to release seawater ballast, petrochemicals including jet fuels as well as cleaning their tanks out and discharging the residue right into the river. Oil tankers no longer foul its water and much of the discharge has been halted and finally GE was finally made to stop dumping. The EPA just announced it would force GE to clean up their mess, the largest superfund site in the country.

Riverkeeper’s reach now extends beyond the banks of the Hudson with new projects that include an educational program to foster awareness in young people. As founder and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, the nationwide umbrella groups of Riverkeeper, Kennedy and colleagues are spearheading an effort to clean up factory hog farms that they say are polluting the nation's waterways.. Their roster of ongoing legislative battles range from the continued enforcement against GE, the closing of Indian Point nuclear power plant vulnerable to terrorist attack that could render NYC uninhabitable, blocking power plants responsible for fish kills to fighting the practices that allow agricultural waste runoff to seep into waters far from its source.

This is a time for deep concern since the Bush White House is more hostile to environmental legislation than any other administration in the last century. Our nation cannot afford to let our most precious resource – our waters – become increasingly polluted and dangerous. We need to reject the Bush administration rollbacks and move ahead with the work of cleaning up our waterways. We have a chance with Riverkeeper’s commitment and persistence. This is the kind of story we love to tell here at VoiceYourself. Riverkeeper is another example of how one person’s actions started a fight to right a wrong that thousands of others joined literally changing the course of life for an entire ecosystem and millions of people.