John Cronin

The Improving Hudson?

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

I was recently contacted by a reporter writing a story about "How the Hudson has improved." 

"What is your premise?" I asked.

"That the Hudson was once called an open sewer and now it is an environmental success story."

I know well the terms "open sewer" and "environmental success story" when applied to the Hudson River.  I spent years helping to make them popular.  Many years.  So many years that by 2009 those phrases have become worn and dated.   The Hudson may no longer be an open sewer,  but neither is it the river most of us thought it would be. 

I have been involved in Hudson River issues since I was 23.  I am 59.  In good conscience I can no longer boast of the river's comeback to a 30 year-old, or a 20 year-old, or my 14 year-old son.  After all, what has happened in their lifetime?

There is no evidence of which I am aware that the Hudson has improved in the last decade.  Indeed, there is every reason to believe that the river is in decline, despite official and unofficial attempts to manage its restoration and protection.  Major fish species, such as American shad, Atlantic sturgeon, and smelt, have been in trouble for over a decade.  Twenty years ago, they were not.  The Hudson's once proud commercial fishery is just about over.  There is more human population and therefore more pollutants being discharged into the river, directly and indirectly.  Invasive species are more prevalent. 

Imagine No Pollution

The Future, and the Failed Clean Water Act

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

The Clean Water Act has failed.  It is time for a new law.

There is a mistaken, popular belief that the central purpose of the 1972 Clean Water Act is to bring to justice the bad guys who are polluting the nation’s waters.

The Clean Water Act was written to create a global market place based on American innovation that would end pollution in our lifetime, and “restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters.” 

But a list of the Clean Water Act's failed policies reads like an indictment of the law itself.

The first policy goal on the first page of the Clean Water Act is the elimination of the discharge of pollutants by 1985.

The law also sets a goal of making the nation’s waters fit for sports and recreation, and for fish and wildlife by July 1983.

It calls for management plans to end pollution from runoff, protect watersheds, and enhance water resources, in keeping with the 1983 and 1985 goals.

It requires the cessation of toxic discharges in toxic amounts.

It establishes a sweeping domestic and foreign policy on water designed to protect life and health here and abroad.

Indeed, the enormity of the Clean Water Act’s failure can be measured in lives.  The law directs the Secretary of State to assist other nations in eradicating their water problems to “at least the same extent as the United States does under its laws.”  But since the Clean Water Act was enacted, an estimated 70 - 100 million people, mostly children in the developing world, have died from diseases related to water pollution.  The Pacific Institute estimates that between 36 million and 70 million will die by 2020.

Crabbing with Bob

From INSIDEOUT, Sep-Oct '09. Copyright 2009, John Cronin

(NOTE: You can view a short video of Bob Gabrielson here.)

Bob Gabrielson handed me William Warner’s Beautiful Swimmers and told me to memorize it.  “It’s the bible,” he said. It was dog-eared and fragrantly stained with Baltimore spice; Bob had logged many hours studying it over plates of steamed and seasoned blue crab.

The book’s title is a translation of the scientific name for blue crab, callinectes sapidus.  In Greek, “calli” means beautiful and “nectes” means swimmer. “Sapidus” is Latin for savory or delicious.  The cover told me that Warner had won the Pulitzer Prize for his book about the lives of crab and watermen on Chesapeake Bay.  Bob told me, “To catch crab you have to think like a crab.” 

Taking Questions on PCBs - Pt. 2

From June 17 - 19  I was the guest blogger on The New York Times' "Taking Questions" feature of its City Room blog.  The topic was "General Electric's project to remove PCBs from the Hudson River."   The Times asked that I respond to 5 reader-submitted questions daily.   Part 2 of the selected questions and my answers follows,  just as it appeared on the The New York Times site:

Where will the dredge material be disposed once it is removed from the river?

— Posted by Dan

A number of posts have asked about the amount and destination of dredged material from the Hudson. Dan’s is the simplest (and he asked first). But I will try to cover all the questions here, so pardon the lengthy answer.

First, the full operation of coordinating, staging and executing the dredging and material processing is impressive. G.E. is mobilizing 17 tugboats, 35 barges and 12 dredges working 24 hours per day, six days a week to remove and process the 400,000 tons of sediment that Environmental Protection Agency is focusing on for Phase 1, which ends in November when weather closes the Champlain Canal.

Despite the world-class collection of heavy equipment, one of the most striking aspects of the operation is its relative quiet. Attention to details, such as “hospital-grade generators,” was an essential part of the project design agreed to by the E.P.A. and G.E. If you visit the dredging project, and I recommend it, don’t expect a cacophonous construction site. (Carpool, and visit Jim’s Broadway Café, or one of the many local establishments.)

Taking Questions on PCBs - Pt. 1

From June 17 - 19  I was the guest blogger on The New York Times' "Taking Questions" feature of its City Room blog.  The topic was "General Electric's project to remove PCBs from the Hudson River."   The Times asked that I respond to 5 reader-submitted questions daily.   Part 1 of the selected questions and my answers follows,  just as it appeared on the The New York Times site:

It seems I’ve known about this PCB problem forever, but I don’t really know the details. I recall that you were quite involved at the beginning of this process, so I’m hoping you will be able to answer my questions: when did the PCB contamination start, how was it discovered, and what have been the steps leading up to this final cleanup?

— Posted by Morna Crites-Moore

The best primer on PCBs and the Hudson can be gleaned from visiting the dedicated PCB web pages of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the General Electric Company. These are not necessarily dueling sites, though they may disagree on some points. You can put together a good regulatory time line as well as the current status of the cleanup from the information they present.

The PCB controversy has a long history. The issue first came to public attention in August 1975 in an article in The New York Times in which Richard Severo reported that the New York State environmental conservation commissioner, Ogden R. Reid, and the health commissioner, Dr. Robert P. Whalen, had issued a public warning to avoid eating striped bass from the Hudson River because of PCB contamination. Mr. Reid cited two General Electric plants in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls as a likely cause.

Bobby Gabrielson 1929-2009

"There's no other place that anybody should ever want to be than right here on the Hudson River.

From The Last Rivermen, Robert Nixon, Producer and Director; John Cronin, Producer and Writer.  Produced by The Last Rivermen Production Company.  Copyright 1991, Riverkeeper, Inc.

To view a longer film clip, click the link below:

A River's Pleasure

From INSIDEOUT, May-Jun '09. Copyright 2009, John Cronin

Dave White and I sat becalmed in an extended slack tide, the time between ebb and flood when the Hudson goes still before turning itself around. If the weather is calm, the gibbous moon half past, the air pressure high, and the down-current lazy, slack could last for a half-hour or more.

Our boat and drift net were motionless, as were we.  My idle thoughts turned to Garrison’s Landing, from where we had set out.  There the day was once oriented around the world of river captains, boat builders, coal yard laborers, dockworkers, and fishermen -- men like Dave were the rule.  For me, a city kid at heart, being his oarsman was a thrilling, not a workaday, job.  He found my enthusiasm amusing.

I had moved to the Landing in late spring and worked with Dave all summer, trapping crabs and netting sturgeon.  He thought this would be our last day of sturgeon fishing; we had caught but a few all week.   I was feeling melancholy—about the end of the season, about no longer rowing for Dave.   

Finally, he stood to his full six foot-two, palms against the back of his hips, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and cap cocked back. He surveyed the Highlands in a sweep, as if evaluating his holdings. 

Hope Swims

From INSIDEOUT, Mar-Apr '08. Copyright 2008, John Cronin

Shad give me hope. From my window I am watching ice bounce off the sill and spread over ground like a carpet of frisky white millet. The day’s light has the dingy cast of mid-winter, and the air isn’t air at all, but a raw, floating frost. 

Windshields, utility poles and sidewalks are glazed over, and awkward pedestrians negotiate the slick pavement with all the flailing, but none of the joy, of a 1-year-old. The spring ahead feels so far out of reach that the previous 57 seem an invention. But somewhere, out at sea, American shad are headed for the Hudson with warmer weather in tow. 

River Love

From INSIDEOUT, Jan-Feb '08. Copyright 2008, John Cronin

My first shad season with commercial fisherman Bob Gabrielson was also my first work experience on the water. I was 30. In those early, fervent days, I said often, “I love the Hudson River!” Bob was patient with my zeal. He took joy in a good season, enthused about the tiny shrimp that covered our arms when we pulled crab pots, delighted in daybreak lifts of the nets  when the early, red sun was a fisherman’s to enjoy. But he could also curse the river — swear sailors’ oaths at the weather or a poor catch, vow never to fish again, slam his truck door and drive off the dock as if he would never return.

I don’t recall Bob ever using the words “love” and “river” in the same sentence. I did hear him say this: “There’s no place anyone should rather be than right here on this piece of water.”

 The Hudson is randomly inviting and dangerous, comforting and demanding, beautiful and ugly. Its caprice is not the flighty affection of an unpredictable lover but the arrogance of a self-sufficient nation-state. Its indifference to the world of humans is profound. If one can love the river, it is largely an unrequited passion.

Sturgeon

From INSIDEOUT, Nov-Dec '07. Copyright 2007, John CroninCornetta’s Seafood Restaurant, a stone’s throw from the Hudson River in Piermont, NY, boasts a sight found at no other eatery in the Hudson Valley.  Mounted on the wall of the upper dining room is a 7 foot 10 inch Atlantic sturgeon. “There isn’t a person who doesn’t say, ‘I can’t believe this is out of this river,’” said proprietor Suren Kilerciyan.  “And they all call it ugly – until they learn that sturgeon is where caviar comes from, and then they change their minds.”

 Dennis Hardy caught the fish in April 1974 while hauling his father’s shad nets on the south side of the Tappan Zee Bridge. “It got itself tangled up in the bottom line of our nets.  I wrapped my arms around it and my partner Donny Piesco and I dragged it into the boat,” Dennis laughed.  “The three of us wrestled each other to the floor.  The sturgeon was 210 pounds and flapping so hard I thought it would knock the sides of the boat off.”  Dennis was 17 at the time.