The Riverkeepers: Two Activists Fight to Reclaim Our Environment as a Basic Human Right
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Overview
A modern-day David and Goliath tale, The Riverkeepers is an impassioned firsthand account by two advocates who have taken on powerful corporate and government polluters to win back the Hudson River. John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., tell us how we too can fight for our fundamental right to enjoy our invaluable natural resources.
Revealing shocking stories of commonplace environmental crime — from drinking water tainted with hospital waste to fish populations contaminated by freely dumped PCBs — Cronin and Kennedy describe their dramatic confrontations with more than ninety environmental lawbreakers. The Riverkeepers is a timely call to action that will resonate across America as the backlash spearheaded by congressional leaders and their major corporate allies threatens to reverse the hard-won victories in environmental law and policy.
Synopsis
A modern-day David and Goliath tale, The Riverkeepers is an impassioned firsthand account by two advocates who have taken on powerful corporate and government polluters to win back the Hudson River. John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., tell us how we too can fight for our fundamental right to enjoy our invaluable natural resources.
Revealing shocking stories of commonplace environmental crime — from drinking water tainted with hospital waste to fish populations contaminated by freely dumped PCBs — Cronin and Kennedy describe their dramatic confrontations with more than ninety environmental lawbreakers. The Riverkeepers is a timely call to action that will resonate across America as the backlash spearheaded by congressional leaders and their major corporate allies threatens to reverse the hard-won victories in environmental law and policy.
Publishers Weekly
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.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
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.)Library Journal
Former Hudson River commercial fisherman Cronin became an environmental activist when he saw that his river was too polluted to fish and founded Riverkeepers, of which Kennedy is chief prosecuting attorney. Here they tell the story of Riverkeepers' battle against environmental offenders.Kirkus Reviews
Two leaders of the Hudson Riverkeeper organization, a New Yorkbased environmental advocacy group, recount their legal and public-relations battles against the polluters of one of America's famed waterways.Cronin, a former Hudson River commercial fisherman, and Kennedy, one of the new generation of that storied family, are, respectively, head and chief prosecuting attorney of the Hudson Riverkeeper group. The Hudson River, which had inspired artists and environmentalists such as Thomas Cole, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Burroughs, had become so polluted by the 1960s that swimming in its waters was forbidden. Cronin and Kennedy trace the grass-roots environmental activism that culminated in the formation of their organization in 1983. Since then, the group has filed close to 100 lawsuits, reportedly induced polluters to pay close to half a billion dollars to help restore the river, achieved a landmark agreement to protect New York City's water supply, and spawned a number of similar groups. The authors depict their enemies as numerous, well funded, and unscrupulous—including corporations such as Exxon and General Electric, as well as the "most antienvironmental Congress in the nation's history." Despite their self-righteous rhetoric, the authors outline three important ways to counter right-wing stereotypes about environmental elitism. First, they advocate acting locally. Second, they urge that environmentalism not be seen as anti-growth, but as a way to preserve a decades-old industry (fishing) and prevent long-term community blight by companies who pursue short-term strategies. Third, they see environmentalism as the ultimate struggle "against special interests who would monopolize, exclude, and liquidate [resources] for cash."
While hardly objective, this manifesto sheds much light on how the modern environmental movement emerged at the local level and how it is striving to deal with the current, more hostile political landscape.