Table of Contents

Contents
Preface
Foreword by Vice President Al Gore
1. Battleground
2. John Cronin
3. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
4. Keepers
5. King John to General Electric
6. Westway and NIMBY: Democracy at Work
7. Enforcement
8. Watershed
9. Barbarians at the Gate
10. The Human Place
Appendix: Directory of Riverkeeper Programs
Index

About the Author

John Cronin is a former commercial fisherman who was appointed Hudson Riverkeeper in 1983 and lives in Garrison, New York, where he serves as vice president of his local school board.

Reviews

Samuel G. Freedman The Riverkeepers comes as the tonic for a cynical age. It reminds us that the truest idealists are warriors of a sort.

Vice President Al Gore from the Foreword The Riverkeepers is the kind of personal account America needs to hear more often.

Craig Wilson USA Today The Riverkeepers often reads as much like a detective novel as it does a primer on how to reclaim a river.

Barry Werth Outside A blueprint for ecosystem protection.

Bill McKibben author of The End of Nature and Maybe One This fine book chronicles two great rivers: the mighty Hudson, unimaginably rich with life, and the equally mighty stream of environmental law that began flowing with the Magna Carta. If each can be freed from the sewage left by corporate polluters, they may nourish us for many centuries yet. Thank God for the Riverkeepers!

Samuel G. Freedman The Riverkeepers comes as the tonic for a cynical age. It reminds us that the truest idealists are warriors of a sort.
Vice President Al Gore from the Foreword The Riverkeepers is the kind of personal account America needs to hear more often.
Craig Wilson USA Today The Riverkeepers often reads as much like a detective novel as it does a primer on how to reclaim a river.
Barry Werth Outside A blueprint for ecosystem protection.
Bill McKibben author of The End of Nature and Maybe One This fine book chronicles two great rivers: the mighty Hudson, unimaginably rich with life, and the equally mighty stream of environmental law that began flowing with the Magna Carta. If each can be freed from the sewage left by corporate polluters, they may nourish us for many centuries yet. Thank God for the Riverkeepers!

By the 1960s, New York's Hudson River, long celebrated for its beauty, was nearly dead from pollution. Today it is rich in aquatic life, thanks to the legal efforts of local environmental groups such as the Hudson Riverkeeper Fund, which employs Cronin as its patrolling riverkeeper and Kennedy as its chief prosecuting attorney. Here, the authors recount their grassroots battles, including to end pollution by Exxon tankers and to gather support to protect New York City's watershed. Although some passages read like legal briefs, the David-and-Goliath struggles (often involving perjury by companies or governmental bodies) and their effect on individual lives are compelling. Noting that Hudson activism "has become a national model for ecosystem protection," the authors give something of an environmental state-of-the-union address. Despite many improvements, they say, protective agencies such as the EPA cater to polluting industries, law enforcement is lax and antigovernment backlash has undermined environmental advances. Cronin and Kennedy recast the need for clean air and water not as an elitist or extremist concern, but as a basic democratic principle. They define environmental injury as theft from the American people, citing, for example, the fact that although fish teem in the Hudson again, the livelihood of the Hudson fisherman is gone, due to an over-dumping of PCBs that has made most species unsafe to eat. Armchair environmentalists may want to get involved for real after reading this staunch and quietly passionate book. (Oct.)