Welcome to Week 12 of the #HudsonRiverscapes Photo Contest! We asked members of the public to submit their best photos (no people) of the Hudson River and tributaries, and just look at all the beautiful shots they delivered. 

We are delighted to share with you these wonderful images of our beloved Hudson River. If you would like to submit your own photos to this contest, you can find out more about the rules - and prizes! - here. ​

​This is a contest, but all voting takes place on Facebook. To vote, simply log into your account, click the button below, and like and/or comment on your favorite. At the end of each week, the photo with the most likes and comments wins a Household Membership to the Hudson River Maritime Museum. If you don't get to vote this week, keep liking and commenting anyway - all photos are entered into the Grand Prize at the end of the contest - a free private charter aboard Solaris for 2021!

​Thank you for everyone who participated this week!

On September 11, 1609, when Henry Hudson’s sailing ship Half Moon entered the river later named for its captain, crew member Robert Juet recorded the river’s physical characteristics—its depths, shoals, winds, tides and currents. He noted a rich array of fishes, “...they tooke four or five and twentie Mullets, Breames, Bases, and Barbils...” and trees, “...goodly Oakes, and Wal-nut trees, and Chest-nut trees, Ewe trees, and trees of sweet wood in great abundance...”1  Native tribes who had settled the shores of the river long ago, called it Mahicantuck, translated as “river that flows both ways.” Mahicantuck is an apt description of the Hudson River estuary–a long arm of the sea in which saltwater meets fresh water running off the land, moving back and forth by tidal currents.

A sailor would find the river very different today than it was in Henry Hudson’s time. Human activities are a lingering threat to the health of the Hudson and streams in its basin. Is the river clean? Swimmable? Will it ever again be what Henry Hudson experienced? We can’t dial back four centuries, but we can do our best to restore the Hudson so people can enjoy the benefits of clean water.

Pollution and Early Clean-Up
“The river from Troy to the south of Albany is one great septic tank that has been rendered nearly useless for water supply, for swimming, or to support the rich life that once abounded there.” Governor Nelson Rockefeller, 19652

As cities grew within the watershed of the Hudson, their sewage discharges increased, especially at New York City in Westchester County and the Albany Capitol District. Untreated sewage, tannery and paper mill discharges, and industrial and commercial chemicals routinely entered the river in these and many other cities. Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) also caused untreated or poorly-treated waste to flow into the Hudson. In 1965, New York State voters passed a billion dollar Pure Waters Bond Act to fund sewage treatment. In 1972, the federal Clean Water Act made cleanup a national priority, providing billions more, and the Hudson benefited.
Water quality has greatly improved since state and federal actions of the 1960’s and 1970’s made water quality improvement a priority. For example:

· Around Manhattan, 150 million gallons of raw sewage entered the river daily until 1986. When the North River sewage treatment plant began operating off Manhattan in 1986, bacteria concentrations dropped significantly.

· Near Albany, sewage treatment plants did not disinfect their discharges; these organic wastes fed bacteria that in turn depleted the river’s oxygen. In the summer of 1970, a study found so little dissolved oxygen that the few fish seen were “swimming slowly at the surface, gulping air, and disturbing an oil film which covered the water surface.”3  After treatment plants came online near Albany, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) monitoring programs in the area collected 3,314 fish representing 27 species in the summer of 1975.
              
In addition to requiring sewage treatment, the Clean Water Act limited discharges from factory waste pipes. North of the City at Tarrytown, the Hudson’s color once matched the paint applied to vehicles at a General Motors plant there. In the years following the law’s passage, industrial and municipal discharges gradually came into compliance.

The entire stretch of the Hudson estuary was designated a “No Discharge Zone” in 2003, prohibiting discharge of vessel waste from the Troy Dam to the Battery in Manhattan. As part of this designation, 15 pump-out stations along the river are now available to recreational boaters.

In recent decades, conditions have improved for fish and other river creatures.  At last count, 222 species of fish had been recorded in the Hudson and its watershed.

River Habitats
Nearly 300,000 acres of tidal wetland and shallow water habitat in New York Harbor has been lost to landfill and dredging since European settlement began. Between Catskill and Albany, nearly one-third of the river has been filled in, starting in the mid-1800s as engineers created a single, deep shipping channel through a complex of islands, shallows, and wetlands. Railroad construction also greatly altered habitat, burying wetlands and cutting bays and coves off from the river. A permitting system established under the Clean Water Act has slowed the pace of wetlands loss. Unfortunately, few of these historically altered habitats can be restored to their former condition, so protecting what still exists today is a priority.

Management of the Hudson River Estuary
Another boon to river clean-up was the passage in 1987 of the Hudson River Estuary Management Act (ECL 11-0306) which created the Hudson River Estuary Program, administered by NYSDEC. The program focuses on the tidal estuary and its adjacent watershed from the federal dam at Troy to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City. The program is guided by the Hudson River Estuary Action Agenda which aims to achieve six key benefits the public receives from our work: clean water; resilient communities; a vital estuarine ecosystem; conservation of fish, wildlife, and habitats; preservation of the river’s natural scenery; and enhanced opportunities for education, river access, recreation, and inspiration.4
              
Delivering these diverse ecological and human benefits requires an approach that is watershed-wide in scale and addresses the region’s streams and tributaries as well as the main stem of the Hudson.  The Estuary Program relies on partnerships with federal and state agencies, as well as local municipalities, non-profits, academic and scientific institutions, businesses, trade organizations, landowners, and dedicated volunteers to accomplish its mission. 

Legacy Contaminants—The PCB Cleanup
In 2008, a contaminant reduction model was developed under the Contaminant Assessment and Reduction Project (CARP), in partnership with the NY-NJ Harbor and Estuary Program, to assess priorities for clean-up by addressing dioxins, heavy metals, DDT and PCBs in water and river sediments.  The model identified PCB pollution in the river as the number one chemical contaminant issue.

Between 1947 and 1977, General Electric (GE) released about 1.3 million pounds of toxic polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into the river from plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls. After 1977, PCBs continued to enter the Hudson from subsurface contamination beneath the Hudson Falls plant, adding to the burden of earlier discharges in the river bottom. However, it wasn’t until 2002 that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) settled on a cleanup plan with GE.

Years of sampling, feasibility studies, and design work followed before sediment removal began in 2009. After six years of dredging, approximately 2.75 million cubic yards of PCB-contaminated sediments, containing 150 tons of PCBs, had been removed from a 40-mile stretch of river between Fort Edward and Troy.

DEC challenged the effectiveness of the dredging and officially requested EPA to conduct a reevaluation, citing that unacceptably high concentrations of PCBs remain in river sediment. Beginning in the summer of 2017, DEC collected hundreds of new sediment samples and nearly 230 fish samples from 1,700 locations. The agency’s comprehensive analysis confirmed that elevated levels of PCBs remain in the surface sediment of the Hudson River and that fish concentrations are not recovering at the rate anticipated by the EPA. As of this writing, the EPA has delayed the issuance of a Certificate of Completion to General Electric.

CSOs and Water Quality Improvements
CSOs continue to be a major source of contaminants to the Hudson River. Annually, CSO discharges into the Albany Pool area total 1.2 billion gallons, while 27 billion gallons discharge into New York City waters. However, communities with CSOs are required by the state to develop long-term control plans, and almost all communities along the estuary have done so.  Implementation of these long-term control plans will reduce the future contaminant loading to the river from many of these CSO areas.

In 2012, NYSDEC and New York City signed an agreement to develop 10 waterbody-specific, long-term control plans, plus a citywide plan. This agreement should reduce CSO discharges into New York City waters by approximately 8.4 billion gallons a year.
              
In 2008, NYSDEC partnered with the Capital District Regional Planning Commission to address more than 100 CSOs in the Capital District, contributing more than $2 million for planning and engineering studies. Updated permits now require municipalities in this area to achieve the goal of swimmable water quality. The Rensselaer sewer district began disinfection in 2013, and disinfection came online at two large Albany plants in 2014. The Albany Pool plan, announced early in 2014, is expected take 15 years to implement and cost $136 million. The plan includes $5.8 million for green infrastructure projects and $2.13 million for tributary enhancements.5

Investments in Clean Water
Funding is an important element of the revitalization of the Hudson. One source of funding, New York State’s Environmental Protection Fund (EPF), includes a line item for the Hudson as well as water quality improvement projects. The EPF increased from $25 million when it was created in the 1990s, to a historic $300 million for each of the last three years, the highest level in the fund’s history. This investment prioritizes programs to protect New York's water bodies, promote stewardship projects in parks and on other state lands, revitalize municipal waterfronts, and build community resilience to climate change.

In addition, Governor Cuomo is advancing a $10 billion Green Future Fund to support clean water infrastructure, which includes $5 billion in total for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure—building upon the $2.5 billion Clean Water Infrastructure Act and effectively doubling the state's investment in clean water over the next five years. In 2018, DEC announced over $103 million in grant awards for 124 projects through its annual Water Quality Improvement Project (WQIP) grants program. The projects will improve water quality, reduce the potential for harmful algal blooms (HABs), and protect drinking water across the state.

Another source of funding comes from state Environmental Bond Acts.  Several New York State Bond Acts have provided substantial grants to support water quality improvements, including millions invested in municipal facilities and infrastructure, brownfield cleanups, and open space programs since 1965. The state also assists with individual grants to municipalities for seasonal disinfection of waste water discharges and the development and implementation of Long-Term Control Plans to address CSOs. 

Looking Ahead
Investments in clean water infrastructure over the past few decades have dramatically improved water quality. On many days, in many places throughout the Hudson River Estuary, water quality is excellent for swimming. In 2018, nearly 6,500 people swam in organized public swim events in the Hudson River Estuary and New York Harbor, and thousands more swam at public beaches or other water access points. After periods of dry weather, the Hudson River Estuary is safe for swimming in many locations. But after rain, the water is more likely to be contaminated, especially in areas affected by combined sewer overflows and street water runoff.

While there has been much improvement in recent years, the water quality in the Hudson Valley will never be as unblemished as it was when the region was a wilderness. Human influence is pervasive and threats remain. In the watershed, water resource recovery infrastructure and separated/combined sewer overflows along the estuary and its tributaries require significant investments to continue to improve water quality for the future. On a larger scale, climate change and changing weather patterns are affecting all aspects of water management, including the impact of sea-level rise on water resource recovery infrastructure in shoreline communities. The good news is that investments toward improved water quality are making a difference.

We don’t have to turn back the clock to have a drinkable, swimmable, and fishable Hudson. By protecting and restoring streams that replenish the estuary and nourish its web of life, and through continued investment in water resource management strategies, we can continue on the path of restoring the water resources critical to the health and wellbeing of the state’s residents.

Welcome to Week 10 of the #HudsonRiverscapes Photo Contest! We asked members of the public to submit their best photos (no people) of the Hudson River and tributaries, and just look at all the beautiful shots they delivered. 

We are delighted to share with you these wonderful images of our beloved Hudson River. If you would like to submit your own photos to this contest, you can find out more about the rules - and prizes! - here. ​

Editor's Note: The following text is a verbatim transcription of an article written by George W. Murdock, for the Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman newspaper in the 1930s. Murdock, a veteran marine engineer, wrote a regular column. Articles transcribed by HRMM volunteer Adam Kaplan. See more of Murdock's articles in "Steamboat Biographies". 

                                                No. 252- Washington Irving
The flagship of the Hudson River Dayline fleet- the “Washington Irving”- is a steamboat that is better known to the present generation, although her whistle no longer echoes among the Highlands of the Hudson; for it was 14 years ago that the pride of the Dayline met with an accident which ended her career.

The steel hull of the “Washington Irving” was built by the New York Shipbuilding Company at Camden, N.J., in 1912. Her keel was 405 feet long with an overall length of 416 feet, six inches. She had a breadth of beam of 47 feet, over the guards she was 84 feet, and her hold was 23 feet, seven inches deep. The gross tonnage of the “Washington Irving” was 3,104 and net tonnage 1,664. Her engine was constructed by the W. & A. Fletcher Company Iron Works of Hoboken, N.J., and was the incline double expansion type with three cranks and three cylinders. Two of the cylinders measured 70 inches in diameter and the third measured 45 inches, with a seven foot stroke. Steam was supplied by four single and two double ended scotch boilers carrying 170 pounds of steam and generating 6,000 horsepower.

The flagship of the Hudson River Dayline was launched at Camden, N.J., on Saturday, December 7, 1912- this date marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Dayline by Commodore Alfred Van Santvoord.

Destined exclusively for service as a day-boat between New York and Albany, the “Washington Irving” was by long odds the largest and most exquisitely furnished inland passenger vessel in the world. She had a passenger carrying capacity of 6,000, and made her first trip on Saturday, May 24, 1913, under the command of Captain David H. Deming with Thomas Hall as chief engineer.

Running in line with the Dayline fleet which consisted of the “Mary Powell,” “Albany,” “Robert Fulton,” “Hendrick Hudson,” and the “Alexander Hamilton,” the “Washington Irving” continued in service on the Hudson river until June 1926 when she met with an accident which closed her career.

On June 1, 1926 the “Washington Irving” left her pier at the foot of Desbrosses street, New York, bound for Albany with 200 passengers aboard. A heavy fog made the visibility very poor and the whistle of the “Washington Irving” kept up a constant din as she left her berth and headed upriver. The pilots of other vessels were also experiencing difficulty in navigating due to the fog, and thus it happened that the tug “Thomas E. Moran” of the Moran Towing Company, hauling two iron oil barges, hove into sight of the “Washington Irving”- too close to avoid a collision. One of the barges struck the “Washington Irving” aft of the wheel on the port side- smashing the side in completely.

Captain David H. Deming, commander of the pride of the Dayline, realized immediately the seriousness of the accident and tied down the whistle of his vessel for the purpose of summoning aid from other craft in the harbor. Passengers were ordered to the top deck to don lifebelts, and the continuous blasts of the “Washington Irving’s” whistle soon brought more than a dozen other vessels to her side. The ill-fated dayboat reached a pier on the Jersey shore where passengers were able to scramble to safety. Two lives were lost in the accident- a Mrs. Arthur Hoag and her three-year-old daughter of Long Island City.

The “Washington Irving” sunk along side of the pier- coming to rest on the end of the Holland Vehicular Tunnel. On February 14, 1927 the vessel was raised and later taken to Bayonne, New Jersey where she was tied up. In September 1933 the wreck of the “Washington Irving” was sold for junk to the Northern Metal Company of Philadelphia where she was taken and broken up.

​The hamlet of New Baltimore is an unincorporated community of less than 200 homes situated on the west bank of the Hudson River approximately 15 miles south of Albany. From the river, New Baltimore is identified by several early nineteenth century houses with verandahs, the steeple of the Dutch Reformed Church and the squared bell tower of a former Methodist church. Driving through the hamlet, one might notice the well-preserved nineteenth century houses, carriage barns and church buildings, as well as the lawns and mature trees which contribute to its attractiveness. The core of the hamlet was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. At its height of its prosperity and physical development, New Baltimore was a substantial community with hotels, stores, hundreds of houses, docks and industries. Of the latter, shipbuilding and ice harvesting were dominant. Today’s New Baltimore reflects little of the urban density and industrial character typical of much of its waterfront during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
 
The hamlet was first settled by several Dutch families and New Englanders at the end of the eighteenth century. By 1800, the place had accumulated two dozen houses and the name New Baltimore, often abbreviated as simply “Baltimore.”  New Baltimore was strategically located just below an area of the river choked with islands and bars that often impeded ship navigation to Albany. One of these obstructions, the infamous “overslaugh” bottled up shipping during periods of low water. New Baltimore had the advantage of being below these obstructions and still close to Albany. A promotional map from 1809 encouraging investment in real estate describes the place as “commanding a spacious harbor and intersected by extensive turnpike roads opening a fair prospect for the mercantile and seafaring adventurer.”

​Shipbuilding was clearly underway in New Baltimore by 1793 when the sloop Sea Flower was built by Nathan Dunbar. This was followed by more than a dozen new sloops, schooners and a brig built for the river trade and even trade with the West Indies. These sailing vessels tended to average 60 to 70 feet in length on deck and carried freight and passengers up and down the river while maintaining communications between Hudson River towns, New York City and southern New England. At least one New Baltimore sloop remained in service locally into the 1870s. The town’s yards also thrived repairing and rebuilding sailing vessels. By 1830, a community of shipbuilders, masters, owners and merchants had emerged building docks, warehouses, several shipyards and a series of mostly frame houses on small lots along what are now Main and Washington streets.

​
​A drydock was added to New Baltimore’s yard facilities in 1835. Sloops continued to be built and repaired here into the 1850s, when steamboats and barges began to be produced. In 1858, Jedediah R. and Henry S. Baldwin purchased the Goldsmith and Ten Eyck shipyard and began a business that continued almost uninterrupted until 1919. The Baldwins built at least 100 steamboats, canal barges, hay barges, tugboats and a large steam dredge over their 61-year history and repaired many more. A marine railway was built at the company’s Mill Street yard in 1884 which facilitated the launching of new boats and the repair of passenger steamboats of all but the largest sizes. Among the more notable boats built here were the 182-foot sidewheeler Andrew Harder in 1863, 253-foot propeller steamboat Nuhpa in 1865, the sidewheel towboat Jacob Leonard in 1872, the 127-foot sidewheel steamboat G.V.S. Quackenbush in 1878 and the 139-foot hay and excursion barge Andrew M. Church in 1892. Between 1905 and 1906, 13 boats were launched at the Baldwin yard. Photographs of the yard taken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show the marine railway in use, new boats being built on the shoulders of the railway slip, an office and loft building, several storage buildings, a steam mill for sawing and planning lumber, a basin adjacent to the river to keep logs from drying and checking, several steam boxes with brick furnaces and teams of workers with caulking mallets in hand. Launches of the larger boats were often celebratory events for the community and recorded in photographs. 

​​Small boats were also produced and serviced in New Baltimore. In the 1880s, Herrick & Powell produced yachts and launches with steam and early internal combustion engines. In 1898, William H. Couser moved his boat shop to Mill Street where he produced and repaired small craft for some years. The Baldwin firm built or repaired at least one small auxiliary schooner at its Mill Street yard and briefly operated a small yard nearby at Matthews Point for building smaller tugs.

​​New Baltimore’s mid and later nineteenth century prosperity was expressed in its fine homes and churches. Stylish homes with verandahs overlooking the river and sometimes distinctive cupolas were built by the town’s leading industrialists and merchants in the latest styles of the day. Steamboats connected New Baltimore to Albany, Hudson and ports in between and a five-story hotel was built on the town square. Large warehouses flanked the public dock and coal pockets were built near the steamboat dock and a short distance south on Mill Street. By the 1890s, the waterfront was flanked by enormous icehouses at its north and south ends and across the river on Hotaling Island.
 
New Baltimore’s decline was gradual. The West Shore Railroad by-passed the hamlet by more than a mile when service began in 1883, limiting the possibilities that direct rail service might have provided. Major fires in 1897, 1905, 1912 and 1929 largely destroyed the business center of the community. The natural ice industry declined during this same period due to public concerns over bacterial contamination from polluted river water and the simultaneous rise of clean manufactured ice.
 
The Baldwin shipyard was purchased by William Wade in 1919 and incorporated as the New Baltimore Shipbuilding and Repair Corporation. It may have built one or more wooden tugs. The last launch in town was the 90-foot wooden steamship Kittaning built in 1922 for the Manhattan State Hospital on Ward’s Island. Thereafter, the yard became a dock for Wade’s adapted sand and dredging company. While ideal for building wooden sloops, barges, tugs, ferries, and small to mid-sized steamboats, New Baltimore did not have enough available flat land along the river or the access to rail shipments necessary to create an efficient yard for building with steel. Steel shipbuilding succeeded elsewhere on the Hudson River where adequate land and infrastructure were available, notably at Kingston, Newburgh, and Cohoes.

With its prime industries lost, New Baltimore lost status, population, and a number of ancillary businesses that once thrived on its booming economy. Images taken by Office of War Information photographer John Collier, Jr. in October 1941 show a town with little apparent activity, dilapidated fences, unpainted porches and a waterfront with rotting barges. Buildings continued to be lost to fire and neglect and trees reclaimed industrial sites and yards. Areas of dense-packed housing were gradually thinned and by the 1970s, the town had lost as much as one-fourth of its historic building stock.
 
The hamlet’s stabilization and recovery, beginning in the 1970s, paralleled a broadened appreciation for the Hudson River and the gradual clean-up of its waters. Today, the hamlet is an attractive bedroom community for families and individuals with employment in adjacent communities and nearby cities. Its maritime heritage is echoed in the houses of the shipbuilders, captains, shipwrights and rivermen, the remains of the earth-filled docks and slips, a lone derrick, several subbing posts along the shoreline and the stone foundations of some of its lost buildings and industrial sites.
​

Sources:
Bush, Clesson S. Episodes from a Hudson River Town, New Baltimore, New York. SUNY Albany, 2011.
Gambino, Anthony J. By the Shores of New Baltimore: Its Shipyards and Nautical History. Self-published C.D., 2009.

Released in on September 25, 2012 on Appleseed Records, A More Perfect Union was one of Pete Seeger's last albums (Pete Remembers Woody​ was released simultaneously). A collaboration with longtime friend and fellow songwriter Lorre Wyatt, the album features other musicians including Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, and Dar Williams, among others. Pete was 93 when the album was recorded and passed away on January 27, 2014 at the age of 94. 

"Bountiful River" is the last song on the album. 

​​"Bountiful River" Lyrics 
by Pete Seeger and Lorre Wyatt

Deep love like a bountiful river
Fills the soul renews the heart
My love is always and ever
We will never part
Sailing sailing together
Fills the soul renews the heart
Flowing flowing forever
We will never part
Chorus Oh, bountiful river3x
We will never part
Reviving this river
Fills the soul renews the heart
Embarked on an endless endeavor
We will never part

Blending one voice with another
Fills the soul renews the heart
Weaving our lives with these waters
We will never part
Each swimmer that crosses the river
Fills the soul renews the heart
Singing we're in this together
We will never part
Shadfish surging up river
Fills the soul renews the heart
Singing we're in this together
We will never part
An eagle circling in heaven
Fills the soul renews the heart
An eagle and river repeating
We will never part

Thanks to HRMM volunteer Mark Heller for sharing his knowledge of Hudson River music history for this series.

​If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!​

If ever a man loved a river, Robert Hamilton Boyle Jr. loved the Hudson — and he was not afraid to shout his love from the rooftops. In his classic text, The Hudson River: a Natural and Unnatural History (1969), Boyle makes his feelings abundantly clear with the book’s very first line. “To those who know it,” wrote Boyle, “the Hudson River is the most beautiful, messed up, productive, ignored and surprising piece of water on the face of the earth. There is no other river quite like it, and for some persons, myself included, no other river will do. The Hudson is the river.”

Gratifyingly, Boyle’s love for the Hudson was not merely a historic/scientific scholarly interest. Yes, Boyle studied the Hudson obsessively, but he did more than passively analyze his favorite waterway. He actively fought to save the river in its darkest hour, when pollution had reduced the Hudson to a shell of its former self. In his decades-long conservationist crusade, Boyle wrote watershed exposes, discovered crucial legal strategies, and founded a seminal environmental organization. Not bad for blue-collar “Brooklyn-born sportswriter and angler.” By the end of his life, Boyle — the down-to-earth fisherman — had become “the unofficial guardian of the Hudson River.”

All that being said, a question remains. How did Boyle come to be so fascinated by the Hudson River? Why did he want to save it so badly? By all accounts, Bob Boyle grew to love the Hudson during his 1940s boyhood boarding school years, when he spent his days off fishing by the (then relatively clean) riverside. When he moved to Croton-on-Hudson in 1960, Boyle was treated to a rude awakening. Instead of the semi-healthy river of his youth, Boyle found a waterway this close to clinically dead. Pollution, of both chemical and human waste varieties, had progressed to intolerable levels. In addition to being a health hazard to humans, the river’s once abundant flora and fauna were mysteriously dying out. Boyle, ever the fisherman, would not stand for that sort of thing. He decided to take up arms and go to war for the Hudson. His weapon of choice? A pen.

To reiterate an old cliché, a picture is worth a thousand words. Bob Boyle clearly took that message to heart. In his historic 1965 Sports Illustrated article, “A Stink of Dead Stripers,” Boyle began with a simple command: “Take a good look at the picture below.” The picture in question revealed a thousand-strong pile of striped bass “left to rot” at a dump. Even without context, a discarded fish-kill of that size looked, well, fishy. Bob Boyle thought so too — and he knew just who to blame. The culprit, in Boyle’s (ultimately correct) opinion, was the Consolidated Edison Company.  The exact circumstances of the kill were not exactly clear — “but the fish apparently were attracted by warm water discharged from the plant and then were trapped beneath a dock.” Concerned citizens took pictures of these massive fish kills and submitted them to the New York State Conservation Department — which later “denied that such pictures existed” when questioned by Boyle. Of course, Boyle did eventually manage to get ahold of those pictures. Their publication, in conjunction with the scathing Sports Illustrated article, was the opening salvo in Boyle’s war against Consolidated Edison. From the start, one fact was crystal clear: Boyle wasn’t going to pull any punches. 

In 1962, Consolidated Edison announced plans for a new hydroelectric power station, plans which had local fisherman and conservationists up in arms. The company hoped to carve a facility out of Storm King Mountain, a site renowned for its scenic beauty. Locals were, understandably, a little horrified by this scheme. The proposed power plant would obviously mar the landscape — and it probably wouldn’t do the river’s fish population much good either. Bob Boyle suspected that Con Ed’s “water-intake equipment would kill small fish,” decimating the population of his beloved striped bass. In 1965, Boyle joined a number of conservation groups (including Scenic Hudson, one of New York’s most enduring non-for-profit organizations) in a “lawsuit against a proposed Consolidated Edison power plant.” It was not an easy fight, but, after many years of legal battle, the conservationists’ efforts bore fruit.

The lawsuit, entitled Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, resulted in “the first federal court ruling affirming the right of citizens to mount challenges on the basis of potential harm to aesthetic, recreational or conservational values as well as tangible economic injury.” It was, in every respect, a game changer and the true beginning of the modern environmental movement. And what was the crucial keystone of Scenic Hudson’s case? Scientific studies on the Hudson’s striped bass population, which would have, as Boyle predicted, been decimated by Con Ed’s plant.

After the Battle of Storm King had been won, Boyle did not choose to sit back and bask in his victory. No, he knew that work still had to be done. The river remained a polluted mess. By preventing the creation of Con Ed’s power plant, Boyle had only fulfilled the physician’s doctrine: “First, do no harm.” The Hudson still needed a thorough cleaning and a dedicated protector, a watchdog to scare the polluters away. To that end, Boyle began to conceive of a plan. He imagined a sort of ‘river keeper,’ a naturalist/conservationist “out on the river the length of the year.” This riverkeeper would keep watch on the river, sniffing out polluters and bringing them to task. What’s more, the riverkeeper would not act alone. They would have an entire organization behind them — an organization with real teeth. Boyle already had already founded just such an organization, the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, in 1966. 

In 1983, the Fishermen’s Association evolved into ‘Riverkeeper,’ a non-for-profit environmental organization dedicated to the protection of the Hudson. But what about the organization’s aforementioned teeth? Well, Boyle had discovered, years earlier, a pair of 19th century laws (the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and the New York Harbor Act of 1888) which banned the “release of pollutants in the nation’s (and the state’s) waterways.” Furthermore, the two Acts allowed “citizens to sue polluters and collect a bounty.”

Luckily, the laws still held in the modern era. Bob Boyle and the Fishermen’s Association tested out their legal strategy against the Penn Central Railroad, and were able to stop a “pipe spewing oil from the Croton Rail Yard” and collect “$2,000 in fines, the first bounty awarded under the 19th-century law.” The bounty money was then repurposed to underwrite suits against other polluters. Riverkeeper wisely kept this legal strategy. All in all, it was an admirably self-sustaining system.

Eventually, Riverkeeper evolved past the Hudson River. It became a model for others around the world, a part of the “Waterkeeper alliance.” Today, the Waterkeeper organization “unites more than 300 Waterkeeper Organizations and Affiliates that are on the front lines of the global water crisis, patrolling and protecting more than 2.5 million square miles of rivers, lakes and coastal waterways on six continents.”14 The individual waterkeepers work with local communities, enforce environmental laws, track down polluters and educate children about the environment. They are watchful protectors, just as Bob Boyle intended.

Although his main contribution to the environmental movement was undoubtedly Riverkeeper, Boyle never gave up and grew tired of his favorite river. He certainly never gave up fishing for his beloved striped bass. After all, Boyle is the man who once wrote: “There may be more stripers in the Hudson than there are people in New York State. I often find this a cheering thought.” Boyle was, in life and in print, down-to-earth, passionate, and adventurous — with a wryly sardonic sense of humor. He lived a life rich in meaning, a life he could be proud of. Case in point: Boyle once predicted that the Hudson would become “either ‘clean and wholesome’ or ‘bereft of the larger forms of life.’” Before he died on May 19th, 2017, Robert H. Boyle could be sure of two things:
​
1) the river had “gone the better way” and
2) he had played a small but crucial part in its salvation.

It just goes to show. Everyone is capable of making a difference, if they only have the courage to try

​​This article was originally published in the 2019 issue of the Pilot Log. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!