History of the Hudson: Hope for the Future (Part 1) - English Subtitles

The Hudson has been inhabited by people for about 10,000 years. We tend to think that civilization started in 1609 when Henry Hudson sailed up the river, but in fact, there was a large population of Native Americans that lived along the Hudson River shoreline. And the Hudson attracted them because it had this unique, highly productive environment. The Hudson is an estuary that has tides, it's connected to the ocean. And that connection with the ocean allows ocean fish to come in. Around 1825 or so, the Hudson was really going through a profound change. It was becoming industrialized. During the iron-producing years, there was a massive need for charcoal, and so the whole area was deforested. Some of the new manufacturing involved a lot of environmental chemicals. There was raw sewage going into the Hudson. You really cannot imagine how yucky it was in terms of the things people would just dump in the river willy-nilly. I grew up in Poughkeepsie, and my neighbors had a little power vote. They invited me to go out with them one time, and my parents insisted that I get shots just in case I fell in because it was so polluted. But there were a few people who were very aware of it and who brought it to people's attention. One of them was Pete Seeger. Sailing down my dirty stream, still I love it and I'll keep the dream. So he had this dream that the river would be clean. And at the same time, there was a big uproar about the proposal to build a power plant on Storm King Mountain. I end up getting to spend many long days out here on the river. So it's a friend for me. When we come around this corner here, northbound, you'll see Storm King Mountain. In 1963, Con Edison was proposing to build a pump storage hydroelectric power plant on Storm King. People looked at that and said, wait a second, Storm King Mountain is one of the most beautiful, iconic vistas in the country. We shouldn't be doing this. So a group of citizens banded together and they created the group that's now called Scenic Hudson to fight the case. It took them 18 years. So that really launched the environmental protection laws that we have now. It launched the environmental movement. It gave citizens the right to sue. Federal laws were passed that prevented water pollution. The sewage treatment plants were built. The oxygen levels came back. The fish came back. All of a sudden, the Hudson was becoming an inviting environment. So the Hudson River Estuary Program was created by New York State in 1987. We take an ecosystem-based approach to managing the river. Fran Dunwell is the founding coordinator of the Hudson River Estuary Program. She's just a really multifaceted woman that has advanced the rights of the Hudson River into the consciousness of the people that live here in the valley. The driving force for the creation of our program really came from the environmental groups, Scenic Hudson, Clearwater, Riverkeeper, and seeing that everything was fragmented. So you had the water people doing water things and the forestry people doing forestry things and you had the fish people doing fish things, but none of them were really talking to each other and none of them were managing the river as an ecosystem. So our program was really designed to create that integration among programs. When I first started, there was very little river access. So one of the early goals that we set was that we would have one river access point on the Hudson for every river community. The number of people who are using the Hudson has just gone up astronomically. They're swimming in the Hudson, they're kayaking, canoeing, jet skiing, boating, fishing. The river is calming. I definitely come down here, you know, I'm going through things and just want to sit by the water, hear the water go, and see the boats pass. I get to drink the water, which I believe comes from the Hudson River, and I swim in I think that when I'm older, hopefully it won't be as polluted because that's one of my life goals, to like stop pollution. You see dramatic improvements in sewage contamination, dramatic improvements in dissolved oxygen. So we know we can fix it. Now we're at a point where we have to fix that last little bit. We have to finish the job. We can learn from the mistakes of the past, and this can be a river valley reborn. When we ask people, what do you care about, what is the legacy you want to leave for your children, it was interesting, the people said that the natural beauty would be preserved. And natural beauty and ecosystems go hand in hand. Still I'll love it and I'll dream that someday, though maybe not this year, my Hudson River and my country will run clear. And each little city says, who me? Do you think that sewage plants come free?