Currents Summer 2024 (1) - Flipbook - Page 66
Despite the many victories, the Hudson still has its share of challenges. Towns can’t
intentionally dump sewage into the river anymore, but heavy storms can still cause sewers to
overflow into the Hudson anyway, and climate change is causing more and more of those
storms to occur. The river’s fishing industry hasn’t recovered from toxic PCBs having been
dumped in the river for decades by General Electric, and even though G.E. undertook a courtordered cleanup ten years ago, preliminary data suggests that the restoration wasn’t
successful. And Holtec, the company decommissioning Indian Point, is suing the state in
order to proceed with its final discharge into the Hudson.
To make matters worse, the river almost lost one of its key defenders this year when
Clearwater, battered by financial problems that were exacerbated by the COVID pandemic,
announced that if they didn’t raise $250,000 in two months they would be in danger of
disbanding.
They ended up raising $347,000 in four weeks.
David Toman, the group’s current Executive Director, said that the swell of support was about
more than the Clearwater. It was a sign of how far the river has come and how far the people
of the Hudson Valley know that it still has to go.
