Dunkerley Dialogue to feature Riverkeeper founder Boyle
Author and environmentalist Robert Boyle, one of the Hudson River's earliest and most dedicated defenders, will speak at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 14.
Boyle's talk, which will be presented in conjunction with the current Tang exhibition, Lives of the Hudson (through March 14, 2010), is part of the museum's Dunkerley Dialogues series of talks among artists, writers, faculty, and guests. The event will be a conversation between Boyle and Tom Lewis, the Skidmore English professor who co-curated Lives of the Hudson.
Considered by many to be the father of environmental activism on the Hudson River, Boyle has been in the forefront of its defense since the early 1960s, a time when the river was a badly polluted dumping ground for factory waste, raw sewage, and the carcinogenic industrial substance known as PCBs. In 1966, after exposing massive fish kills at the Indian Point nuclear plant that threatened the river's centuries-old fishing industry, Boyle founded the Hudson River Fishermen's Association (HRFA). He also discovered two obscure 1899 federal laws that helped grassroots amalgamations of fishermen, scientists, and river residents to undertake? and win?legal battles against major corporate polluters. (The Rivers and Harbors Act of 1888 and the Refuse Act of 1899 forbade pollution of American waters and provided a bounty reward for those reporting violations.) One 17-year struggle by HRFA and Scenic Hudson prevented Consolidated Edison from building a hydroelectric facility at Storm King Mountain; another legal battle shut down Manhattan's planned Westway highway and real estate project.
In 1980, Boyle originated the idea of an independent Hudson River Foundation for Science and Environmental Research, to be funded by utilities that had polluted the river. In 1982, HRFA launched a patrol boat, hired John Cronin as the first full-time Riverkeeper,and developed an independent organization based on his work. HRFA changed its name to Riverkeeper in 1986.The first of approximately 180 non-profit river advocacy organizations now operating worldwide, itsmission isto protect the integrity of the river and its tributaries and watersheds, wildlife, and waterside communities.
A New York City native, Boyle earneda master's degree in history and international relations from Yale Universitybefore embarking on a 32-year career with Sports Illustrated, where he wrote about boxing and the outdoors. According to the environmental Web source planetsave.com, "He caught his first fish at age 4 and got interested in the river, with its fill of shad, bass and sturgeon, after moving to Croton-on-Hudson in 1960. He would find dead fish, sewage and even medical waste in the waters." In 1969, he publishedThe Hudson River, A Natural and Unnatural History.Sometimesdescribed as the Hudson's own Silent Spring, it is now required reading in many environmental science courses.Among Boyle's other books are Sport, Mirror of American Life (1963); The Water Hustlers (1971) with John Graves and T.H. Hudson, which focused on the future of New York City's water supply; Malignant Neglect (1979), Acid Rain (1983), and Dead Heat, The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect (1990).
A 1998 an Albany Times Union special report on the Hudson described Boyle's Historyas"a howl for cleaning up the river [that] became a rallying cry"? one widely heeded. "It's a very different river today than it was 30 years ago," Boyle said. "It has gone from the most ignored to the most studied river in the world. But we must be ever vigilant. We can never rest easy again. The danger for plundering it again will always be there."
For more information about the event, call 518-580-8080.
