Riverkeeper - Growth of The Organization

Growth of The Organization

These victories raised citizen empowerment and provided new funding to expand HRFA influence along the Hudson. Robert Boyle had called for a "Riverkeeper" in a book, arguing for someone "on the river the length of the year, nailing polluters on the spot...giving a sense of time, place and purpose to people who live in or visit the valley". Thus, he was inspired in meeting John Cronin, an area local who had worked aboard the Clearwater, a replica of the Hudson River sloop that fostered education and the restoration of the Hudson. Cronin worked in the Clearwater Pipewatch project, inspecting companies for Clean Water Act (CWA) violations. His first assignment entailed an adhesive tape manufacturing company. As a result, the company was convicted of twelve violations of the 1972 CWA. Initially uninspired by citizen participation in environmental fields, Cronin was transformed by this outcome. "I wasn't a scientist. I wasn't a lawyer. As just an average, everyday citizen, I was able to get a polluter charged". After his legal forays, Cronin became a lobbyist at the Center for the Hudson River Valley and then worked as a political aide; educating himself on government structure. Still, he did not forget the Hudson and after a couple years returned to the river to become a commercial fisherman. Cronin boated much of the Hudson and fostered an admiration for the river from his experiences with local fishermen. After facing multiple struggles as a fisherman, he found love in the river's beauty and bounty, but also hardship in its daily trials. His passion developed beyond simple environmentalism to encompass a deeper respect for a mutual coexistence between himself and the river.

Boyle found his Riverkeeper in John Cronin and Cronin found his calling in this new organization. Only after Cronin's first acts as Riverkeeper did it grow in popularity. Upon taking on his role as Riverkeeper in 1983, Cronin was tipped off by a state trooper that oil tankers were rinsing contents into the Hudson. He quickly engaged the issue and often anchored near the advised area to listen to the captains' discussions over the radio at night. When he learned ships were flushing out jet fuel residue and filling up with river water to take to an Exxon refinery, Cronin started collecting water samples. Over two years, he recorded one hundred seventy-seven Exxon tankers discharge into the river and take up clean water. Cronin's proof was so thorough that Exxon settled, paying $1.5 million to New York State for a private river management fund and $500,000 to HRFA; half of which went to Riverkeeper and the other half towards environmental projects on the Hudson. This case afforded Riverkeeper local and national regard. In 1986, HRFA joined Riverkeeper as one group to protect the river, to retract it from corporate abuse and to return it to public use. Cronin saw Riverkeeper's new mission as not just to hunt polluters, but to prove itself to the community and empower those who felt the social disruption of the ecological misuse of the Hudson.

In essence, Riverkeeper is an environmental "neighborhood watch" group maintained by concerned citizens. Its constituents are not public officials and are not swayed by politics, but include members who defend the public use and restrict the private alienation of the river's benefits. Thus, Riverkeeper has engaged environmental justice issues, such as community park access. For example, around 1990, the City of New York Parks Commissioner restricted greenspace access by banning bus and subway transit, frequented modes of transport for African Americans, from reaching certain parks. Riverkeeper sued Westchester County and forced it to reopen six county parks that were closed to meet the budget, but due to their proximity to a railway, were mainly used by minority communities. The County had not closed any golf courses used by affluent residents, even though they were greater strains on County funds than parks that offered some minorities their only access to the river. This was not the only occasion where land use policies threatened the health of the Hudson River watershed as a public resource. In 1990, a team of Riverkeeper attorneys took on developers and lackluster enforcement agencies to protect the reservoirs and streams that constitute the water supply for nine million New York City and Westchester County residents. Riverkeeper also united with a chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), in Ossining. During the 1960s, this oldest stable African American residential community in the Hudson Valley was rezoned industrial and has suffered social decline ever since. In 1991, Riverkeeper and the Ossining NAACP effectively sued the Ossining Planning Board to repeal an expansion of a construction debris processing plant that would have worsened diesel fumes and house vibrations at adjacent households.

The Riverkeeper movement has redefined grassroots forces by democratizing resources for communities and has afforded a constant medium of participation for neighborhoods whose episodic battles can exhaust their passion. Local waterways are protected by citizen-led efforts to confront pollution in the courts, the media, and the political system with the aid of a network of local knowledge to prevent the failure of democratic processes by politically endowed industries. This movement restored communal ownership and control to the lives of its participants, many of which were transformed by efforts to embrace democratic rights to clean water and the redress of regulatory failures. Diana Leicht, a quiet mother from Newburgh, N.Y. turned irate when her municipal water supply became so polluted that it sickened her child. She contacted Riverkeeper, which informed her of her legal rights to clean water. They discovered her timidity had grown from a desire to be a good citizen and not for fear of conflict. With the aid of Riverkeeper, she organized sixty mothers to learn their rights under legislation such as the CWA and the Safe Drinking Water Act. They gained media interest, contacted state agencies directly and at hearings, sued the town of Newburgh, won their claims and forced the payment of damages. By empowering citizens to embrace their democratic rights, Riverkeeper helped stir the passion of two hundred residents to confront the town board at a local meeting resulting in the board's public statement to become more alert to local needs.

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