River Watchdog Tracks Polluters and Poachers, Then Hounds Them in Court

John Cronin uses the same tools against polluters that his medieval forebears used against poachers: vigilance and cunning.

But the Hudson River’s modern-day riverkeeper also wields two more weapons: outrage and lawsuits.

The Hudson, he says, is “supposed to be ours. . . . And I’m not going to be a chump for GE, Exxon or the City of New York, who think they can take it away from me, my children or any kid on the street who wants to go to the river with a fishing pole.”

So in 1983, when Cronin discovered that Exxon’s tankers were emptying their ballasts off Dutchess and Ulster counties and then refilling them with fresh water to sell in water-poor Aruba, he took the giant oil company to court. Exxon forked over a half a million dollars in settlement.

So has he taken on New York City in a slew of lawsuits over its sloppy handling of its water system.

And so he defends the 315-mile waterway with an almost ferocious protectiveness, using a specially built 25-foot vessel to investigate reports of illegal discharges or catch big ships poaching river water.

He skulks around dumps and along the banks of the river, taking pictures, gathering evidence. But “he spends more time in court than on the river,” said Robert Boyle, his boss.

“At first, he would say things I considered outrageous,” recalled Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the late U.S. attorney general and the legal counsel for the Hudson River Fisherman’s Assn., Cronin’s employer.

“He’s been right so much of the time, he’s like a Cassandra,” Kennedy said, referring to the mythological prophet whose correct prediction that Greece would invade Troy was at first disbelieved.

A children’s book has been written about Cronin. Warner Bros. is planning a commercial film about his exploits as an environmental knight-errant, and a British film crew did a documentary about his work.

His success has led to the creation of a Long Island soundkeeper and a San Francisco baykeeper. He’s been working with New York and New Jersey to create a New York harborkeeper.

Such success would have been considered unlikely in 1983 when Cronin took the job.

He was 32, and had worked at various times and places as a dancer, roofer, dishwasher, book salesman, political aide and fisherman. He didn’t set foot on a boat until he was 30. He grew up in Yonkers, N.Y.--a major Hudson city--but admits that he was barely aware of the river.

Then, in the early 1970s, Cronin encountered folksinger Pete Seeger, who was trying to alert people to pollution on the Hudson.

Cronin signed on with the campaign. After a few weeks, the other volunteers drifted away and it was just Seeger and Cronin.

“Pretty soon, he’s an environmentalist,” Seeger said.

And pretty soon, he was joining with others who contended that the Tuck tape company of Beacon, N.Y., lacked permits for all its discharges. Cronin testified before a federal grand jury, and the company pleaded guilty to violating the Clean Water Act.

He went on to work for Rep. Hamilton Fish Jr. (R-N.Y.) and for the state Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation, where he helped investigate the Army’s involvement in the contamination of Love Canal.

But after a while, he got tired of “sitting in a building in Albany, in a suit, watching the rain fall on windows that didn’t open.”

As Cronin tells it, he planned to take to the road and fish in the Chesapeake. He was cleaning his truck at a friend’s house in Garrison, not far from the river, when he put his arm through a storm door.

Arm in a sling, he couldn’t go anywhere. That’s when Robert Boyle, head of the Hudson River Fisherman’s Assn., offered him the riverkeeper’s job.

It was Boyle’s idea to resurrect the medieval tradition. A Hudson riverkeeper was appointed in the 1970s and held the title briefly before quitting; the post was vacant until Cronin came along.

By the time Cronin joined up in 1983, the association had a respectable track record of inducing polluters to pay into a Hudson River Foundation to study and maintain the river.

Boyle discovered an old law prohibiting discharges in the river, which he used to start a Bag a Polluter program.

It was the association’s determination to save the striped bass that helped put a halt to Westway, a massive highway and redevelopment project that was planned for Manhattan’s West Side. And it was the association’s research that pulled the plug on Consolidated Edison’s proposed pumped storage generator project at Storm King Mountain.

Boyle continues to marvel at his success in bringing Exxon to justice--”He wiped the floor with Exxon. The federal government couldn’t do it, but he did.”

Then, Consolidated Edison Co. agreed to do something about its Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant sucking in fish. Westchester County was cited for contempt of court for failing to properly close its dump site. Cronin brought half a dozen suits against the town of Newburgh, N.Y., for illegal discharges.

Not everyone approves. Robert Kirkpatrick, a former Newburgh town supervisor, thinks Cronin isn’t acting for the river, but for himself.

“I envision John Cronin saying: ‘Lord, step aside. The Hudson River is mine. You can have the rest of the world.’ He sees himself as the infinite being of the Hudson River,” Kirkpatrick said.

Kirkpatrick accuses Cronin of harassment. His aim, Kirkpatrick says, is to gain publicity and to raise money to fund the fishing association through settlements; his targets, Kirkpatrick says, actually are friends of the river.

But Boyle defends the riverkeeper’s knack for publicity.

“He’s put a legal focus on the river,” Boyle said, “and a sustained focus on the river.”