The History of Waterkeeper Alliance:

An International Grassroots Movement Flows from the Hudson

 

A senior thesis submitted to the History Department of Princeton University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts

 

Charles Scribner IV

 

April 12, 2005

 

Contents

 

Part I:  Origins and Growth of Waterkeeper Alliance

 

(p. 1)   Hudson River Fishermen Meet the Dawn of Modern Environmentalism (1962 – 1983)

(p. 14) A Riverkeeper Emerges on the Hudson (1983 – Present)

(p. 29) Riverkeeper’s Success Spawns Keepers Nationwide (1986 – 1999)

 

(p. 39) Waterkeeper Alliance: An International Grassroots Organization (1999 – Present)

 

Part II: Individual Waterkeeper Organization Studies

(p. 57) Explanation of Case Studies

(p. 59) Case Study 1: Mobile Baykeeper (Mobile, Alabama)

(p. 66) Case Study 2: Black Warrior Riverkeeper (Birmingham, Alabama)

(p. 74) Case Study 3: St. Clair Channelkeeper (Harrison Township, Michigan)

(p. 82) Case Study 4: Grand Traverse Baykeeper (Traverse City, Michigan)

(p. 90) Conclusion

 

 

 

Part I:

Origins and Growth of Waterkeeper Alliance

 

Hudson River Fishermen Meet the Dawn of Modern Environmentalism

1962 – 1983

 

In his 1997 foreword to The Riverkeepers by renowned Hudson River activists John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., then-Vice President Al Gore reflects upon a dark chapter of America’s environmental history.   “As our nation grew and our economy became industrialized,” Gore explains, “we began to turn our backs on our waterways, in many cases treating them more as dumping grounds than as national treasures.  Nowhere was this more prevalent than on the Hudson River, which by the 1960s had become so severely polluted – so polluted that some considered it to be dead."[1] Biologists Karin E. Limburg, Mary Ann Moran and William H. McDowell echo Gore's historical judgment, noting that "The once luxuriant estuarine flora and fauna [had] been adversely affected by long-term pollution.  Recreational activities on the lower Hudson had all but ceased by the early 1960s."[2]   Cronin and Kennedy recount in The Riverkeepers how, as new forms of environmental law and activism emerged in the late 1960s and thereafter, the Hudson gradually rebounded.   Nevertheless, in the earlier part of that decade, the river’s improvement appeared unlikely.

            Robert Boyle, an author and environmentalist whom celebrated Hudson River historian Carl Carmer claims “knows more about [the Hudson] than any other living man,” strongly lamented this pollution’s consequences.[3]  Boyle’s knowledge of the river initially grew through conversations with Hudson fishermen during the early 1960s while he was writing fishing articles for Sports Illustrated.[4]  He quickly became a leading expert on the history, ecology, laws, and politics affecting the Hudson.  By 1969 Boyle had written The Hudson: A Natural and Unnatural History.  As Cronin and Kennedy note, “Regarded by many as the best book ever written about a river, it quickly became a classic among nature and history readers and has gone through nearly a dozen printings.”[5]  Indeed, when the Society of Environmental Journalists published their “Great Books” list in 2003, Jim Detjen, their founding president, recalled that reading Boyle’s “excellent book” was crucial to launching his career.[6] 

            Boyle’s road to Hudson activism was paved in 1962, when Consolidated Edison announced its plan to construct the world’s largest pump storage facility on the Hudson Highlands’ beautiful Storm King Mountain.  During Con Edison’s July 31, 1964 license application hearing, Scenic Hudson, a new environmental group, tried to prevent the project on aesthetic grounds.  The hearing examiner dismissed their arguments as selfish and overly idealistic – a bad sign for Scenic Hudson, although the Federal Power Commission would not make a final decision until later.  Boyle heard about this ruling and visited Scenic Hudson to lend assistance.  He told Scenic Hudson’s leaders that while researching for Sports Illustrated he discovered that ninety percent of the Hudson’s striped bass spawned near Storm King.  The hydroelectric plant’s water intake valve could rapidly deplete this major East Coast bass population by the millions.[7]

            Boyle rounded up fishermen and biologists to testify against the plant.  On February 16, 1965, a state legislature committee under Senator R. Watson Pomeroy listened to them and unanimously voted their disapproval of Con Edison’s proposal.  Still, the FPC upheld its prior tradition of siding with industry, refusing to consider the fisheries issue.  They approved Con Edison’s proposal on March 9, 1965.  That August, Scenic Hudson and Boyle approached the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, hoping a lawsuit would overturn the FPC’s ruling since the FPC had ignored so many environmental considerations.   Con Edison maintained that Scenic Hudson’s members were economically injured by the FPC’s decision, and therefore had no constitutional standing to sue.[8] 

The Court of Appeals’ unanimous decision on December 29, 1965 became, on several levels, one of the most influential moments in environmental history.  “For the first time in history,” Cronin and Kennedy point out, “the court reversed an FPC decision to license a power plant, holding that injury to aesthetic or recreational values was sufficient to provide an aggrieved party with constitutional ‘standing.’ ”[9] The ruling forced the FPC to start the hearings from scratch, and finally pay due attention to public concerns.  Judge Paul R. Hays wrote in the decision, “The [Federal Power] commission should reexamine all questions on which we found the record insufficient.”[10] Forcing the FPC to reconsider environmentalists’ arguments, Judge Hays emphasized that “On remand, the commission should take the whole fisheries question into consideration before deciding whether the Storm King project is to be licensed.”[11] Already important to Judge Hays in 1965, fisheries petitions, led primarily by Boyle, quickly became central to the subsequent Storm King opposition.[12]   

Once the Supreme Court refused to hear the FPC’s appeal in 1966, the battle continued until the parties reached a settlement on December 19, 1980.   After Con Edison’s chairman, Charles F. Luce conceded, “We lost the fight,” the company withdrew its plant proposal.[13]  Environmentalists agreed to stop demanding that Con Edison build expensive, fish-saving cooling towers at its smaller Hudson plants, allowing Con Edison instead to install less costly equipment that would still protect most fish.[14]  Representing fishermen at the settlement, Boyle made Con Edison provide twelve million dollars toward creating the Hudson River Foundation, an independent fisheries research institute that has since grown steadily.[15]

Even more important than its eventual settlement, the Storm King case became a “legal milestone” with the December 29, 1965 decision.[16]  “By ruling that a conservation organization could sue to protect the public interest in the environment,” Talbot observes, “…the Second Circuit Court encouraged citizen suits against the actions of other federal agencies.”[17] In fact, the 1965 ruling set precedent enabling “citizen suit” provisions found in most of the federal environmental statutes passed in the 1970s.[18] Historian Samuel P. Hays puts the ruling into broader perspective: “This case is often taken as the beginning of environmental law.  It had a profound effect on both lawyers and environmentalists as to the possible role of law and the courts in achieving environmental objectives.”[19] 

In addition to enabling citizen suit provisions in future federal statutes, the 1965 Storm King ruling also required a new form of environmental review, as Cronin and Kennedy explain:

The decision required the FPC to perform a full environmental

review of the Storm King project, the first full environmental impact

statement ever.  In 1969, Congress codified the Storm King decision in

the most important piece of environmental legislation in history.  The

National Environmental Policy Act forced federal agencies to assess the full environmental impacts of every major decision.[20]

 

Judge Hays had made this requirement clear in 1965 when he wrote, “[T]he record on which [the commission] bases its determination must be complete.  The petitioners and the public at large have a right to demand this completeness.”[21]  The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) made that requirement universal and permanent.[22] 

          Shortly after the Court of Appeals’ landmark December 29, 1965 ruling, however, America’s environmentally concerned citizens still faced considerable uncertainty.  NEPA and the 1970s federal environmental statutes this decision helped enable did not yet exist.  The future of environmental protection on the Hudson also seemed unclear at this time.  Although the December 29 ruling gave environmentalists standing in court, the case’s outcome was not final until 1980.  Over several months before and after the 1965 decision, while gathering evidence from Hudson fishermen for his Sports Illustrated articles and Storm King testimony, Boyle became well aware of the fishermen’s anxieties.[23] 

Creating a forum for these concerns, in February 1966 Boyle invited a handful of commercial and recreational fishermen to his riverside house in Cold Spring.  These citizens felt powerless in the face of industrial pollution and governmental inaction that had depleted the Hudson.  Although most of his visitors were, like Boyle, patriotic former U.S. marines, they began to consider violent acts such as blowing up a Penn Central Railroad pipe.  Hearing their plans for this pipe, which had been drowning ducks and fish in oil for decades, Boyle introduced them to the Refuse Act of 1899.   This statute outlawed pollutant emissions on the nation’s waterways, and stated that whoever turned in the polluter could collect half of the penalty.  Once Boyle discovered this rather obscure statute, Sports Illustrated’s lawyers verified that although such bounties had never been collected, the Refuse Act remained enforceable.  Instead of breaking the law through terrorism, the fishermen could enforce it through the Refuse Act. That night, the group decided to form the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association (HRFA) and pursue Penn Central’s pipe under the Refuse Act.[24] 

Constantly prodding the authorities to enforce this statute, HRFA ultimately convinced the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan to sue Penn Central in June 1968.   According to then-U.S. Attorney Whitney North Seymour, Jr., when HRFA collected half of Penn Central’s four thousand dollar penalty, they were the first organization in American history to receive a bounty under the seventy-year old statute. [25]  HRFA used this momentum to go after several other violators over the next few years, bringing Refuse Act penalties against large polluters such as Standard Brands and the National Guard.[26] They spent their bounties on advertising the Refuse Act, informing the public that if citizens exposed polluters, the crimes could be halted.[27]  This method was particularly successful when Fred Danback, a cable packer at Anaconda Wire and Cable Co., told HRFA in 1969 that his employers had been secretly dumping toxic oils into the Hudson.[28] Danback joined HRFA, who investigated further and presented their findings to the U.S. Attorney.  After years of litigation, Anaconda paid two hundred thousand dollars in 1973, the largest pollution fine ever for an American corporation.[29]

            These citizen lawsuit outcomes had several significant influences on the budding modern environmental movement. As New York Times reporter Wade Greene wrote, following the Anaconda’s historic penalty, “The amount [of the fine] was enough, no doubt, to give force to sentencing judge Thomas Croake’s admonition that pollution levies can no longer be shrugged off by corporations as a cost of doing business.  Anaconda would appear to agree; it has already installed settling tanks to remove the copper from its discharges into the Hudson.”[30] Federal District Judge Croake applauded HRFA’s contribution to the case as citizen activists, “[because it] persistently challenged the bureaucratic inertia which characteristically prevents effective governmental action on controversial matters.’ ”[31] Two decades later, Washington Post reporter Anita Huslin put Croake’s immediate praise for HRFA’s citizen lawsuits into historical context: “Boyle’s and other similar victories helped spawn greater environmental activism in the United States.”[32]

            As a result of HRFA’s contributions on the Storm King and Refuse Act cases, its membership grew rapidly, bringing together a diverse group of three hundred Hudson enthusiasts by 1969.[33]  With increasing numbers of environmental victories and supporters around this time, Talbot notes, “The Hudson River had become the most studied and protected resource in the United States.”[34]  Though revolutionary as a symbol and legal frontier of the budding environmental movement, however, the Hudson was not the only catalyst for progress.  Indeed, scholars and environmentalists point to Rachel Carson’s popular anti-pollution manifesto, Silent Spring (1962), the contaminated Cuyahoga River’s 1969 ignition (1969), and a major 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara as other pivotal factors.[35]  Historian Samuel P. Hays observes that such 1960s influences created “…the second phase in environmental politics, when concern for pollution took its place alongside the earlier-arisen [scenic and recreational] interest in natural-environment areas.”[36]

Environmentalism’s metamorphosis appeared most evident on Earth Day, a national event organized by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and Harvard University graduate students.  Occurring five months after NEPA’s passage, history and law professor Ted Steinberg recounts, “On April 22, 1970, an estimated 20 million people turned out for a series of demonstrations, parades, and rallies in support of ecological issues, the clearest evidence to date of environmentalism’s status as a mass movement.”[37] One hundred thousand New Yorkers assembled that day to hear HRFA President Richie Garrett’s speech in Union Square.[38] Garrett’s prominent appearance at Earth Day not only encouraged further progress, but also was well deserved considering his organization’s prior contributions to the environmental movement.  Hays recognizes this duality, asserting, “Earth Day was as much a result as a cause.  That event came after a decade or more of evolution in attitudes and programs without which it would not have been possible.”[39] 

Cronin and Kennedy suggest, moreover, that the "democratic outpouring at Earth Day 1970," combined with the "constitutional door opened" by the Storm King case, spurred Congress to create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and pass more than forty major environmental statutes.[40] Steinberg supports the notion of Earth Day’s “democratic” influence on legislators, asserting, “In putting forth such environmental reforms, Congress took its cue from the American public.”[41]  The December 29, 1965 Storm King decision provided constitutional backing for the statutes, Talbot adds, by making the environment a “legally protected public interest.”[42] 

The federal statutes created multifaceted goals and provisions for such protection.  The Clean Water Act (1972), for example, sought to establish adequate water quality for wildlife and recreation in American waterways by 1983, and halt the discharge of pollution into navigable waters by 1985.[43]  Moreover, the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act (1970) were the first of many federal statutes providing citizens with the ability to sue government administrators who neglected to enforce environmental law.[44] These statutes also encouraged increased citizen action because many of them, including the Clean Water Act, contain provisions allowing plaintiffs to recover their legal fees if victorious.[45]  Groups like HRFA who are cognizant of citizens’ legal rights can use the federal statutes effectively to protect their waterways and communities.[46] When the Clean Water Act effectively replaced the Refuse Act in 1972, HRFA learned to use the new statute with continued success.[47] The historic grassroots advocacy accelerated in 1983 when HRFA hired former commercial fisherman and lobbyist John Cronin to work as a unique patrolman for the Hudson.[48]

 

A Riverkeeper Emerges on the Hudson

1983 – Present

 

John Cronin’s parents used the Hudson for swimming, rowing, and fishing when they were growing up in Westchester in the 1930s and 1940s. These pursuits, however, seemed quite distant to Cronin during his own Yonkers childhood in the 1950s and 1960s, when the Hudson had become too polluted for swimming and fishing, and too obstructed by developers for boating access.   Cronin never really gave the river much thought until 1973, when he was back home near the Hudson, working as a house painter after "one unsuccessful year of college" and several years of random jobs around the country. That October, at age 23, Cronin heard a radio advertisement for folksinger Pete Seeger’s annual Hudson "Pumpkin Sail" aboard the Clearwater. Cronin decided to attend the party on this sloop -- which doubled as a "floating environmental classroom" -- because he had been a big fan of Seeger's music.  The environmental aspect of the party began to rub off on Cronin because between famous songs, Seeger would deliver moving lectures about the steps citizens could take in improving the Hudson.[49]

             Taking Seeger’s message to heart, and drawing inspiration from HRFA’s citizen lawsuits, in 1973 Cronin and his early mentor, activist Tom Whyatt, began gathering evidence of pollution discharged by the Tuck Tape factory.[50]  As he recounts, "Following the path beaten by [Robert] Boyle and the Hudson River Fishermen's Association, we brought our evidence to the office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan…. A Tuck spokesman sneered to the New York Times that we were 'boy scouts with binoculars,' but the company soon pled guilty to half of the counts and was fined $205,000.  It was the first successful prosecution in New York State under the 1972 Clean Water Act."[51]  

            Cronin's advances in one year as a 23 year old volunteer inspired him. His excitement in realizing how ordinary people could improve the Hudson led him to work on the river, and moreover enjoy it, mostly as a shad fisherman for the next ten years. With his experience as a former environmental volunteer and aide to New York State Representative Hamilton Fish, combined with his growing knowledge of the river as a fisherman, Cronin caught the attention of none other than Robert Boyle. Still leading the HRFA he had founded, Boyle wanted to extend the group's effectiveness by creating a staff position for somebody who would patrol the Hudson as a full-time advocate. In 1982, he convinced Cronin to take the job.[52]  

            Boyle felt that the Hudson required a watchdog because government, despite having passed the aforementioned environmental statutes, was not a reliable steward on its own. [53]  Even if government ignores industry’s lobbying and bribery attempts, it often still fails to protect our resources because of basic budget and staff limitations.  Analyzing America's regulatory structures in the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Matthew Gandy observes, "Whilst the national state in developed economies has been pivotal in pushing through postwar environmental legislation, the responsibility for implementation has fallen largely to sub-national tiers of state authority.  Yet the local state has been embroiled in an increasingly intense fiscal and political crisis since the 1970s, throwing the long-term efficacy of environmental regulation into doubt."[54] 

Gandy's observation of federal and state regulatory effectiveness implies that citizens must shoulder the burden of environmental protection.  Boyle relayed this need for non-governmental action more explicitly, writing in 1980, “[T]he federal and state governments are doing next to nothing to deal with the problem of chemical contamination. The likelihood is that the mess is going to get worse before it gets better, and it won't ever get better until the bass fishermen and trout fishermen and anyone else who cares about natural resources and human health raise absolute hell."[55]  Between 1966 and 1982, Boyle’s HRFA had done just that.[56]  

HRFA’s ability to raise absolute hell, however, remained somewhat limited by the fact that its members had to balance time as HRFA volunteers with their various professions.  Despite HRFA’s excellent work on the Hudson, none of them were held professionally accountable for the river’s protection.  Realizing that the Hudson needed a full-time guardian, Boyle had written in The Hudson that the river should one day have "[an activist] out on the river the length of the year, nailing polluters on the spot….”[57] HRFA called Cronin’s position a “Riverkeeper” because “river keeper” had been an old term in England for wardens who monitored and stocked streams for salmon fishing clubs.[58]  

Rather than simply policing fisheries like these English wardens, Boyle reasoned, the Hudson’s Riverkeeper would patrol and advocate for all matters of public interest on the river.[59]  Also unlike the English wardens, Cronin’s constituency, so to speak, would include not just fishermen but the entire watershed’s inhabitants and visitors.  Consistently out on the water, the Riverkeeper would be accessible to the public he serves.   Boyle further explained that Cronin’s stewardship would be nongovernmental: “You can’t trust government to do the job.  Government makes deals.”[60]  Subsequently, HRFA used the money it had since collected from donations, legal victories, settlements, and its membership’s annual dues to hire Cronin and buy him a patrol boat.[61]  Hearing this announcement, New York Times reporter Nelson Bryant described the boat as “a visible and functioning symbol of concern for the well-being of the Hudson River, its denizens and the people who love and use it….”[62]

With environmental issues on the Hudson becoming more publicized by 1982, through increased outrage over its degradation, as well though the legislative successes of groups such as HRFA, NBC producer Mark Kusnetz decided to accompany and film Cronin on his first day in the Riverkeeper boat.[63]  Amazingly, that very first day, Kusnetz' cameraman filmed Cronin confronting an Exxon oil tanker that seemed to be rinsing its oily tanks and refilling them with cleaner Hudson water.[64]  Having uncovered this previously unknown practice of Exxon, Cronin wrote a letter to Rudolph Giuliani, then-U.S. Attorney for New York City’s Southern District, which led to a major takings inquiry.[65]

Events following this encounter help exemplify the citizen participation that often accompanies effective grassroots activism.  Inspired by the immediate publicity of the Riverkeeper’s discovery, the Hudson’s neighbors began compiling their own evidence of other Exxon tankers’ pollution, and submitting reports to Cronin.  Facing these reports, Exxon's leaders, who theretofore denied that Cronin's initial bust had uncovered a pattern, were forced to admit their regular practice of "rinsing" their tankers in the Hudson, filling up with Hudson water, and selling the water to hotels in Aruba.[66]  The situation became even worse for Exxon when Cronin soon uncovered that this rinsing process caused the tankers to discharge carcinogenic chemicals, such as benzene, into the Hudson.[67] 

Exxon’s subsequent settlement was groundbreaking for the Hudson and the Riverkeeper program.  First, Exxon promised to discontinue its tanker traffic.   The company paid $1.5 million to New York State, establishing the Hudson River Improvement Fund, which continues to support the Hudson.  Exxon also paid HRFA $500,000 to support the Riverkeeper program and upgrade Port Ewen’s Drinking Water Plant. [68]  Following the settlement, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation’s Region 3 director, Paul Keller, told the New York Times, “We wouldn’t have had a case if it hadn’t been for the riverkeeper.  I think the riverkeeper is fulfilling a role on the Hudson that can only be filled by someone who devotes full-time to the river.  It’s the best way to see the problems of the river.”[69]  Keller had grasped the essential consistency of the Riverkeeper’s vigilance after just one case, and his judgments about the program would be proven correct over the next two decades.

First, though, the settlement money awarded to HRFA helped them create, in 1983, a separate organization built around John Cronin’s Riverkeeper position.[70]  This organization, known as Riverkeeper, merged with HRFA in 1986 under the Riverkeeper name.  At that point, Cronin explains, “Our mission was to complete the work of the Hudson River Fishermen – to track down and prosecute every polluter on the river; to protect its biological integrity and return the Hudson to the public.”[71] In 1984, Cronin and Boyle added considerable support to these pursuits by hiring young lawyer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son and namesake of the late senator and U.S. attorney general.

            Cronin and Kennedy initially appeared to be opposites.  The Riverkeeper once lived in the back of a pickup truck, while the attorney had fond memories of visiting his “Uncle Jack” in the White House. [72] However, Kennedy quickly showed his commitment to the Riverkeeper organization’s self-proclaimed “blue collar environmentalism” through his first endeavor.  Investigating pollution on Quassaic Creek, a Hudson tributary that flows through the impoverished city of Newburgh, Kennedy walked through sewage pipes, scaled factory walls, mounted surveillance cameras, and scuba dived in winter.[73]  Because Kennedy collected such thorough evidence, Riverkeeper’s sixteen lawsuits against the creeks’ various polluters led all the defendants to settle before trial, cease polluting, and donate a total of two hundred thousand dollars to the destitute city’s Quassaic Creek Fund.[74]

In order for Riverkeeper to take on a larger number of cases like those it found in Newburgh, in 1987 Kennedy founded the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University in White Plains.[75]  Since then, the clinic’s law students represent Riverkeeper in court under a special New York State agreement.[76] Cronin found cases for the clinic through his patrolling, and Kennedy taught the students legal strategy.  The clinic’s immediate and consistent victories extended Riverkeeper’s potential for strong advocacy.[77] 

Recognizing Riverkeeper’s increasing influence, in 1994 New York State Governor George Pataki asked the organization to help resolve a crisis concerning New York City’s drinking water.  Relying on a unique, protected, upstate reservoir system, the city’s unfiltered water had been considered the nation’s best for decades.  Still, the EPA mandated in the late 1980s that all major cities must install filter systems unless they demonstrate substantial reservoir protection.   New York State had to choose between upstate communities’ wishes to develop the reservoir areas, and the New York City’s paranoia over building the staggering eight billion dollar filter system.   Pataki asked Kennedy to find middle ground among these long estranged parties.[78]

Kennedy’s leadership in the Watershed Memorandum of Agreement raised Riverkeeper’s press coverage, and his own fame, to unprecedented heights.  His contribution to the negotiations has been applauded by reporters, environmentalists, and politicians ever since.[79]  “[D]ictating the agenda for saving the country's premier water system,” environmental author Barry Werth observes, “Kennedy persuaded New York's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to come up with hundreds of millions of dollars for watershed protection.”  By protecting upstate reservoirs, New York City avoided paying for the much more costly filter system.  Upstate communities and environmentalists also benefited greatly from the agreement, Werth explains:

In the end, Kennedy brokered a monument to sustainability.

New York City got to control the lands surrounding the reservoirs;

the city agreed to pay $1.5 billion to cover environmental

safeguards and reimburse upstate localities for lost development opportunities; the people retained the right to sue whoever tried

to undermine the arrangement.[80]

 

Along with honoring Kennedy, the landmark settlement’s major participants have extolled several of Riverkeeper’s other contributors.  For instance, the Trust for Public Land’s Phyllis Ruffer recalls, “Riverkeeper attorney Dave Gordon was very knowledgeable about the agreement as a whole and was eternally vigilant for land acquisition issues.”[81] Maintaining an active role, Riverkeeper’s watershed program has continued to monitor the reservoirs’ surroundings so that New York City receives naturally clean drinking water and avoids a high-priced filter.[82]

            In the watershed agreement’s wake, Kennedy’s rising fame augmented the widespread coverage and respect that Riverkeeper had already long enjoyed.  Time profiled him and Cronin in its 1997 “Heroes for the Planet” series.[83] That same year, Scribner published the first edition of Cronin and Kennedy’s book, The Riverkeepers, which presented the history of Riverkeeper and its HRFA origins.  Kennedy and Cronin further spread Riverkeeper’s story and message through the resulting book tours.[84] Around this time, Kennedy also began recruiting increasing numbers of celebrities to help raise money for Riverkeeper projects.[85] Werth observed that by 1997, given Kennedy’s “blend of skill, charisma, name, connections, and ability to frame environmental issues in human terms,” he was already “perhaps the best-known environmental advocate of his generation.”[86]

            Kennedy consistently turned his growing stature into a positive for Riverkeeper.  The additional press and celebrity support he generated allowed the group to develop, by 2000, a team of scientists and lawyers with a 2 million dollar budget. When Cronin left Riverkeeper that year to pursue a teaching career at Pace University, the organization replaced him with Alex Matthiessen.  The group’s new Riverkeeper and executive director had served as an assistant to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, and as a grassroots manager for the Rainforest Action Network.   New York Times reporter Robert Worth acknowledged that Matthiessen is “widely hailed as a skillful manager and negotiator.”[87]

Matthiessen immediately extended the organization’s monitoring abilities by hiring John Lipscomb as a full-time boat captain.  Whereas Cronin was often too busy with administrative work to maintain a constant river presence, Lipscomb regularly patrols in the boat, except when the river freezes in winter.   He also operates the boat for Riverkeeper’s educational tours and scientific investigations.  Lipscomb’s work allows Matthiessen to focus on running the organization as its executive director, while publicly voicing concerns as its Riverkeeper.[88]

   Additionally, Matthiessen has increased Riverkeeper’s interaction with its membership.  Harnessing the grassroots staple of citizen participation, Riverkeeper successfully encourages its members to write letters, attend events, make presentations to schools, organize fundraising events, investigate development plans, and scrutinize their section or tributary of the Hudson. [89]  Matthiessen’s interests in collaboration also surface in dealings with government, such as when he helped convince the EPA to create a 153-mile “No Discharge Zone” on the Hudson.   Protecting one of the river’s most ecologically diverse stretches from chronic boat sewage discharges, the deal was applauded by Governor Pataki, who said, “By reducing the discharges of harmful wastes into the river, we can protect the health of this historic waterway and expand opportunities for all New Yorkers to enjoy this truly magnificent resource.”[90] 

Rather than becoming complacent, therefore, Riverkeeper has actually increased its active role in Hudson preservation.  Two decades after the 1982 Exxon encounter, Boating on the Hudson’s Editor and Publisher, John H. Vargo echoes the sentiments of many local observers by referring to Riverkeeper as "the Hudson's foremost environmental advocacy organization."[91]  Vargo sees multifaceted strength in the organization, writing, "Since [the Exxon case], Riverkeeper has won over 100 legal battles against river polluters and watershed despoilers which has not only helped to clean up the river but has brought much needed attention to the importance of keeping the river clean."[92]   These outcomes certainly help justify Riverkeeper’ oft-noted primacy among the Hudson’s environmental groups.   As Robert Worth notes in his New York Times summary of Hudson advocates, “While Scenic Hudson and Clearwater rarely resort to litigation, Riverkeeper has long been the bulldog of the trio, keeping a close watch for polluters and bringing suits against corporations as large as Exxon and General Electric.”[93] 

Beyond praising Riverkeeper’s legal victories, prominent New York environmentalists honor several facets of the organization’s formula. Erik Kulleseid, New York State Program Director for the Trust for Public Land (TPL), presents the land use perspective:

TPL benefits greatly from the work accomplished by Riverkeeper

in the Hudson Valley.  They are vigilant in making sure that land development that would threaten the health of the Hudson River

is seriously evaluated and, frequently, prevented.  Several land conservation transactions have come to TPL in recent years

because Riverkeeper has managed to stall or prevent inappropriate development on sensitive or publicly important sites.[94]

 

Matthiessen, meanwhile, emphasizes Riverkeeper’s contributions resulting from its system of on-river monitoring: “There have certainly been other groups involved, but I think that Riverkeeper has really led the charge, both by demonstrating to the public that somebody is out on the water protecting their waterway, and also by acting as a deterrent to would be and existing polluters.”[95]  Expanding the organization’s on-water vigilance through hiring Lipscomb, and voicing his admiration for the merits of patrolling, Matthiessen has thus far shown a great appreciation for the Riverkeeper model.

Matthiessen’s praise and development of Riverkeeper’s unique system reveals the durability and flexibility of the idea first hatched in Robert Boyle’s famous book. “So, I like to imagine,” Boyle wrote in 1969, “will appear the river keeper of the Hudson in future years…. In essence, giving a sense of time, place, and purpose to people who live in or visit the valley.”[96] Boyle revealed further foresight by adding, “We need someone like this on the Hudson and on every major river in the country.”[97]  In 1988, when Connecticut fishermen approached Cronin and Kennedy about Long Island Sound’s problems, Boyle’s early dreams of a widespread “river keeper” movement began to materialize. 

 

Riverkeeper’s Success Spawns Keepers Nationwide

 

1986 – 1999

 

 

            In April 1986, brawny Norwalk lobstermen Chris Stablefeldt and Terry Backer met with Hudson fisherman Bob Gabrielson to buy lobster bait.  Mentioning to Gabrielson that chlorine discharges from a Norwalk’s sewage treatment plant had obliterated their local oyster beds, the lobstermen complained that the situation seemed hopeless.  Gabrielson, who was on Riverkeeper’s board, replied that his friends John Cronin and Bobby Kennedy could show them how to fight back.[98]

            Stablefeldt and Backer invited the Riverkeeper activists down to Norwalk’s coast to observe their devastated fisheries.   They explained that Long Island Sound’s ecological decline was not only killing fish, but also destroying fishermen’s livelihoods.  On Cronin and Kennedy’s subsequent advice, the lobstermen quickly rounded up other concerned anglers and commercial fishermen from Norwalk, forming the Connecticut Coastal Fishermen’s Association (CCFA).   Riverkeeper then helped CCFA strategize against Norwalk’s sewage problems.  The Hudson group introduced CCFA to lawyers from Berle Kass and Case, a New York City environmental law firm who agreed to serve as CCFA’s pro bono counsel.  Riverkeeper then joined CCFA in September 1986 press conferences and news releases announcing that the Berle Kass and Case attorneys were preparing lawsuits against the city of Norwalk for twenty-two hundred violations of the Clean Water Act.[99]  

            Observing the increasing public anger that CCFA and its nearby Riverkeeper mentors had drummed against the sewage spills, the City of Norwalk agreed to rebuild it s sewer system and pay $172,000 out of court.  Part of this 1997 payment went to CCFA.   With guidance from Riverkeeper, CCFA used their settlement rewards to create a “Soundkeeper” program.  In 1988 CCFA hired Terry Backer, their most passionate member, to be the Long Island Soundkeeper.[100] Without delay, Backer began targeting cities along the Sound with threats of additional lawsuits.  All of Connecticut’s coastal cities east of New Haven started settling with CCFA out of court and improving their sewage systems.[101]

 In his 2002 environmental history of Long Island Sound, This Fine Piece of Water, author Tom Anderson frequently highlights Backer’s successful lawsuits and persuasive speeches as pivotal factors in the recent movement to revitalize the troubled waterway.[102] Forcing sewer improvements, voicing concerns for public health and fisheries, and patrolling in a powerboat, the first man to replicate the Riverkeeper model quickly became a local hero.[103]  Cronin and Kennedy recall “Backer for Mayor” signs appearing in Norwalk following the 1987 sewage upgrades, and marvel at the Soundkeeper’s growing impact:

A third-generation lobsterman and a high-school dropout, Terry is

Arguably the most effective advocate yet to emerge on behalf of Long

Island Sound.  By 1990 he had successfully run for the state legislature.

He was later appointed to the Environment Committee and the

Powerful Appropriations Committee, where he now wields his

Substantial weight on state environmental policy.[104]

 

Despite his statewide political responsibilities, Backer remains primarily dedicated to Long Island Sound, where he has never stopped working as the Soundkeeper.[105] In 1987, Praising Backer’s immediately successful replication of Riverkeeper’s methods, Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection’s Paul Stacy told the New York Times, “Terry is right on the water.  He’s going to see things that there would be now way I’d see.”[106]

Helping Backer create this influential job showed Cronin and Kennedy that the Riverkeeper system was duplicable.[107] Additionally, Soundkeeper’s emergence, combined with the growing fame of Cronin and Kennedy’s Hudson achievements, created widespread interest:

[By 1988] we were receiving calls from people all over the

country who wanted to apply for Riverkeeper jobs on their

local waterways.  Of course, we had no jobs to offer.  We were interested, however, in assisting people who were themselves

willing to do the organizing work necessary to start programs

in their own communities.[108]

 

In January 1988, they encouraged the American Littoral Society (ALS), a New Jersey conservation organization who contacted them shortly after Backer’s debut, to found the Delaware Riverkeeper program.[109] One year later, University of San Francisco scientist Mike Herz, read an article about the Hudson Riverkeeper, consulted with Cronin and Kennedy, and launched the San Francisco Baykeeper organization.[110] In 1989, impressed with activist Cynthia Poten’s progress as Delaware Riverkeeper, and concerned about waterways east of the Delaware, the ALS hired boat builder Andrew Willner as New York / New Jersey Baykeeper.[111]

Each of these similarly named offshoots of the Riverkeeper model were locally funded and controlled in order to maintain the same grassroots emphasis as their Hudson forerunner.  Still, they remained philosophically linked by all featuring a vigilant and outspoken watchdog on their respective waterways. All of the “Keepers,” as the patrolmen were called generically at the time, worked within supporting nonprofit organizations so that they could collect their own tax-exempt donations and grants.  Some of the Keepers, such as San Francisco Baykeeper, founded supporting nonprofit organizations from scratch; others started when preexisting organizations like the American Littoral Society created their staff position.[112] 

While Cronin and Kennedy happily taught new Keepers their Hudson system, they remained hesitant to formalize this relationship:

Soon after Long Island Soundkeeper had been established, a

prominent national foundation had offered funding to turn the

Hudson Riverkeeper into a national organization that would

establish chapters throughout the country.  The offer was extremely

generous but premature.  The Hudson Riverkeeper and Long Island Soundkeeper programs emerged out of the needs of their grassroots constituency.  We hoped a national organization would emerge in

the same fashion, from the bottom up rather than the top down.[113]

 

The need to create a national organization – albeit one with a “bottom up” structure – became more urgent in 1992.  That year, with the admitted goal of relaxing water pollution laws, real estate developers from New York’s Catskills region created a now-defunct group called “upper Delaware Riverkeeper.”[114] Although the developers’ ill-intentioned use of the Keeper name signaled an ironic compliment to the real Keepers’ increasing fame and effectiveness as grassroots organizers, Kennedy and Cronin were in no mood for such irony.  They decided the Keeper name had to be trademarked to prevent its distortion.[115]

            Because the existing Keeper organizations were separately controlled, the 1992 trademarking process developed as follows: San Francisco Baykeeper – by virtue of being the first Baykeeper – would own the Baykeeper trademark; Long Island Soundkeeper received the Soundkeeper mark for the same reason; and the original Riverkeeper thus received the Riverkeeper mark.[116]  Forever after, these three local Keepers would be known officially as “Baykeeper,” “Soundkeeper,” and “Riverkeeper,” respectively, out of recognition that they own those trademarks.  The other Keeper programs, such as Puget Soundkeeper – founded in 1990 – or Delaware Riverkeeper, would include their waterway as part of their name.[117] 

            After they agreed on this trademarking, the seven Keeper programs that existed in 1992 implemented additional methods influencing the Keeper movement’s future growth.   The Keepers wondered how they could codify universal standards for all Keeper groups, despite the fact that Riverkeeper, Baykeeper, and Soundkeeper were separately owned trademarks.  As a solution, they created the National Alliance of River, Sound, and Baykeepers, an organization led by Cronin but guided by its independent member groups – all the Keepers.   Riverkeeper, Baykeeper, and Soundkeeper still owned their respective trademarks, but the alliance would preserve overarching standards by approving or rejecting new groups’ applications to use any derivation of “Keeper,” the label common to all its member organizations.[118] 

As a result of this 1992 agreement, with Riverkeeper retaining its moderately disproportionate influence as the original Keeper, the alliance’s member groups collectively administered the voting process for licensing new Keeper programs:

Before allowing a group to use the Keeper trademark for a new program, Riverkeeper and the alliance must be convinced that

there is a need for the program; that its work will not duplicate

efforts by another organization in the area; that it has sufficient

financial support to sustain itself; that its philosophy is consistent

with Riverkeeper’s philosophy, and that there is a qualified

person to fill the job.[119]

 

By creating the National Alliance and its membership standards, this agreement ensured that the Keeper movement would spread in an orderly manner influenced by all its member groups.  Simultaneously, this decision preserved the Keeper movement’s grassroots ethos because it did not change the fact that individual Keeper groups manage their own finances and activities.[120]

            Emerging “from the bottom up,” as Cronin and Kennedy had hoped, the National Alliance of River, Sound, and Baykeepers minimally affected the daily work of established Keepers.[121]  On the other hand, the number of Keeper groups it comprised grew notably in the mid-1990s.   A great deal of this early growth occurred as people learned about a successful Keeper, felt compelled by the system, and started a new Keeper group.[122]  For example, Terry Taminen was running a swimming pool maintenance company when he read about San Francisco Baykeeper in Audubon Magazine, and subsequently founded the Santa Monica Baykeeper organization in 1993.[123]  Taminen – who currently leads the California Environmental Protection Agency for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s environmentally-praised administration – happened to meet the Walt Disney Company’s CEO, Frank Wells, the same year he founded Santa Monica Baykeeper.[124]  Riveted by Taminen’s explanation of the watchful and aggressive Keeper philosophy, Wells agreed to help fund the Santa Monica program.[125] Taminen and Wells then founded San Diego Baykeeper in 1994.[126]  After Wells died that year in a helicopter crash, his wife continued collaborating with Taminen, helping endow Keeper programs in Ventura, Orange County, and Santa Barbara.[127]

            Shortly after Taminen first read about San Francisco’s Baykeeper, New Jersey taxi dispatcher and angler Bill Sheehan coincidentally saw the same Keeper highlighted on ESPN Outdoors.[128]  Sheehan took an interest in Baykeeper’s work, thinking, “Any job that has you on the water that much, making a positive impact, has to be a good job.”[129] In 1994, therefore, he started volunteering for the nearby NY/NJ Baykeeper program.[130]    Baykeeper Andy Willner became so impressed with Sheehan’s dedication that he helped him start a separate Keeper program for the Hackensack River and New Jersey Meadowlands.[131] Becoming the Hackensack Riverkeeper in 1997, Sheehan has since taken over twenty thousand “eco-tourists” on his patrol boat to view the Meadowlands’ surprisingly rich biodiversity and scenery.[132] 

            Also in 1997, Kennedy and Cronin record in The Riverkeepers, “[T]wenty Keeper programs would crisscross the country from Cook Inlet in Alaska to the Chattahoochee River in Georgia, from Casco Bay in Maine to San Diego Bay in California."[133] Although most of the Keepers patrolled waterways on the West Coast and Northeast, the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper proved early on that the movement could also succeed in the South.[134]  Impressed by Keepers’ aggressive defenses of public resources, CNN founder Ted Turner provided funding to start Chattahoochee Riverkeeper in 1994.[135] 

Over the next few years, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper Sally Bethea uncovered massive sewage discharges during her monitoring work, and publicized the health threats to the local press.[136]  The program gained local and national praise when it defeated Atlanta in a record lawsuit to halt the spills.[137]  As Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Colin Campbell wrote a week after the outcome, “Despite the fact that the remedy could cost $2 billion… the agreement is good news and a chance to do things right.”[138]  Bethea’s achievements soon prompted grassroots organizers to form additional Keeper programs in Georgia, such as the Altamaha Riverkeeper in 1999.[139]