Our mission and impact
What we stand for and how we got here
Our mission, vision, and values
Riverkeeper protects and restores the Hudson River from source to sea and safeguards drinking water supplies, through advocacy rooted in community partnerships, science and law
Guarding your waterways
Riverkeeper holds polluters accountable, making the Hudson safer and cleaner each year. We patrol the river, inform the public, and go to court whenever it‘s necessary, to eliminate illegal contamination. At every opportunity, we speak for the interests of our local wildlife.
Defending clean drinking water
Community water supplies are increasingly threatened by pollution, deluge and drought. Riverkeeper empowers citizens to make their voices heard and assure that their precious drinking water resources stay clean and plentiful. Our locally-based approach gets results.
Finding solutions
In addition to fighting threats to clean water like destructive power plants, reckless development, and decrepit infrastructure, we also specialize in solutions: we improve wildlife habitat, foster sustainable energy, increase investment in water supply and sewer systems, and rally thousands of volunteers to restore their local riverfronts.
Riverkeeper's core values
At Riverkeeper, we value:
- the fundamental rights of the Hudson River, its tributaries, and all the living things that depend upon them to exist and thrive in healthy, balanced ecosystems,
- clean water as essential to all living things and access to clean drinking water as a human right,
- a reduction of environmental harms, especially for disproportionately impacted communities and decimated fish and wildlife populations,
- facts, science, and community voices as the foundation of our work,
- trust, respect, integrity, and justice as the basis for our relationships, both within and beyond our organization, and
- environmental and recreational benefits for all.
Riverkeeper's vision
We envision a future in which the Hudson River, its tributaries and watershed, and the New York City drinking watershed are:
- restored to ecological health and balance,
- free-flowing, resilient, and teeming with life,
- reliable sources of safe, clean drinking water,
- recovered from historic and inequitable environmental harms,
- safe and accessible for swimming, fishing, boating and other recreational activities, and
- valued and stewarded by all.
Riverkeeper's Strategic Plan
Our 2020-2025 strategic plan set Riverkeeper on a course for deeper and greater impact on the Hudson River, its tributaries, ecosystems, watersheds, drinking water supplies and the communities that depend on them. Our goal is for the Hudson River and our drinking water supplies to be valued and stewarded by all. For the Hudson and our communities to thrive, in the years ahead, we must all become riverkeepers.
Our story
The river was dying. Run-down factories choked it with hazardous waste– poisoning fish, threatening drinking water supplies, and ruining world-class havens for boating and swimming. Sadly, America‘s “First River“ had become little more than an industrial sewer.
It was 1966 and the Hudson River fishermen decided they’d had enough. The Hudson was their environment, their workplace, their home — in short the centerpiece of their communities. When their catch reeked from oil spilled daily into the river, they decided to band together, forming the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association (Riverkeeper’s precursor), and use a decades-old federal law to turn the tide from ruin to recovery.
Hudson River Fishermen's Association launch day
Shad fishermen on the Hudson River
From left: Jake, Turk, Billy and Tim deGroat, Photo: Dick Knabel
The Gabrielson's fish scale
Their first public meeting was at the American Legion Hall in Crotonville, New York. A standing room crowd, hung from the rafters and pressed against the rifle racks, whooped and hollered wildly when newly-elected president Ritchie Garrett promised his new followers, “I‘ll be the last to let you down.“
Men and women rose to take the microphone and extol the River. Rivermen from Verplanck and Claverack, some descended from generations of commercial fishermen, spoke of the great runs of striped bass, blue fish, and shad; of giant sturgeon bursting with caviar; of herring and alewives so numerous they turned the tributaries to quicksilver; the succulent blue crab and lucrative eel; or the gefilte fish fishery that peaked during Jewish holidays. Recreational fishermen boasted of the trout, black bass and perch they caught on plugs, the youngsters who would net shrimp, goldfish or herring for bait in the marsh at the mouth of the Croton, and how most of Crotonville congregated on its beaches in the summer months for beer and barbecues.
But each of them fretted about what was happening to the River – the polluters were effectively stealing it from the public. New York City was dumping 1.5 billion gallons per day of raw sewage into the River, the paint from Tarrytown‘s GM plant dyed the River a new color each week, the Indian Point power plant was killing millions of fish each day, the National Guard was filling tidal wetlands at Camp Smith, and Penn Central Railroad was discharging oil from a pipe at the Croton Rail Yard. The oil floated up the Croton on the tide, blackening the beaches and making the shad taste of diesel.
Then Bob Boyle, an ornery fly fisherman and outdoor writer for Sports Illustrated, rose to speak. In the course of researching an article about angling in the River two years earlier, he‘d stumbled across two little known laws: the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1888 and the Refuse Act of 1899. These statutes forbade pollution of American waters and provided a bounty reward for whoever reported the violation.
After listening to Boyle with escalating excitement, the American Legion crowd agreed to organize themselves to track down and prosecute the Hudson‘s polluters one at a time until they were all eliminated. They were as good as their word. Two years later they shut down the Penn Central Pipe and collected $2,000, the first bounty ever awarded under the 19th-century statute. They were soon collecting even larger bounties against Standard Brands, Ciba-Geigy, American Cynamid, Westchester County, Anaconda Wire and Copper and many others. The Fishermen also had joined with Scenic Hudson in a lawsuit to stop Con Edison‘s proposal to build a hydroelectric facility on Storm King Mountain. It was, in large part, the discovery of a striped bass spawning ground near the project site that ultimately derailed the deal. The Fishermen used winnings from these cases to build and launch a Riverkeeper boat, which today patrols the Hudson searching out environmental lawbreakers and bringing them to justice.
Looking to the future
Today, Riverkeeper continues its fight, seeking out polluters and teaming with citizen scientists and activists to reclaim the Hudson River. And, we also work to ensure that over nine million New Yorkers have clean, safe drinking water. Today, pollution levels are down, and swimming and boating are back.
But the Hudson‘s recovery is still fragile, still incomplete. Some fish species have not recovered, and many remain too toxic to eat; pollution levels spike with every rainfall. Mammoth cuts in government spending threaten to reverse a half-century of water quality gains, and we face the challenges of antiquated power plants, climate change, and emerging, harmful pollutants.
Riverkeeper‘s vision is of a Hudson teeming with life, with engaged communities boating, fishing and swimming throughout its watershed.
Our history
The Hudson, condemned as an “open sewer” in the 1960s, is today one of the richest water bodies on earth. How did we get from there to now?
1965
Photo: Evelyn Floret for Sports Illustrated
Fight against Storm King plant
Bob Boyle, author, journalist, and recreational fisherman, testifies against Storm King, citing its projected fish kills and a study that shows that the Hudson Highlands is a critical spawning ground for Atlantic coast striped bass.
Join the fight for clean water
Riverkeeper’s work is only possible because of support from people like you who care about the Hudson and the communities that rely on it.
300+
miles of river patrolled annually, from the Upper Hudson and Mohawk River all the way to New York Harbor
380
tons of debris removed from the river by thousands of Riverkeeper volunteers since 2012
$5.5B
$5.5 billion for clean water allocated since 2017 from New York State thanks to our advocacy work
28,148
letters to lawmakers and decision makers in one year