April 2002

AMERICA’S FIRST RIVER: BILL MOYERS ON THE HUDSON
PBS Television presents Bill Moyers on the Hudson

April 23, 9:00 PM, First Part
April 24, 9:00 PM, Second Part

In a four-hour, two part, documentary, journalist Bill Moyers travels from New York Harbor to the Adirondack Forest to explore the history, ecology, natural beauty, and far-reaching legacy of what has been called “America’s most beautiful, messed-up and surprising piece of water.” The catalyst for the conservation movement of the 19th century and the environmental movement of the 20th century, the Hudson River is a paradigm for the ceaseless conflict between America’s love of nature and its restless growth.

Part One of AMERICA’S FIRST RIVER: BILL MOYERS ON THE HUDSON introduces the seminal role the Hudson played in the development of America’s economy, culture, literature, art, and ideology. The program covers the Hudson in the American Revolution, the Hudson River School of painters, the development of industry, and the clear cutting of the Adirondack and Catskill forests.

As the 19th century drew to a close, the Hudson, found champions. John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, bent on preserving the views from their riverside mansions, bought up parcels of land and set them aside as parks, protecting them from the encroachment of industry. In so doing, these often ruthless capitalists became the unlikely founders of the American conservationist movement. Legislation in 1885 established the vast Adirondack and Catskill Forest Preserves. The ravaged wilderness regenerated.

Part Two of AMERICA’S FIRST RIVER: BILL MOYERS ON THE HUDSON looks at the 20th century fight to save the river from pollution, and the critical national environmental legislation that resulted. From John Cronin, who has logged thousands of miles on the water as the Hudson Riverkeeper, Moyers learns about the complexity of the river’s ecology, a delicate balance of salt and fresh water that supports an astonishing diversity of life.

By the 1960s, people all along the river started to say “enough.” It started with individual citizens like Fred Danback, who worked at the Anaconda Wire and Cable factory in Hastings, New York. He teamed up with Robert Boyle - author, angler, and founding member of the Hudson River Fisherman’s Association, one of America’s first environmental organizations - to resuscitate an 1888 federal law that prohibited the dumping of industrial pollution into the country’s navigable waters.

Another river lover featured in the film is folksinger Pete Seeger. Long before it was fashionable, Seeger believed that if people were reminded of the pleasures of the river, they would protect it. He and a group of fellow crusaders built the sloop Clearwater.

Moyers also visits Frannie Reese, who made history when she and the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference fought Con Edison’s plans to carve up Storm King Mountain to build a power plant.

But just as the river was coming back to life in the 1970s, a new threat was recognized: PCBs, an industrial chemical that had been dumped into the Hudson for decades. Overnight, the discovery of PCBs in Hudson River fish destroyed the local commercial fishing industry. At the heart of the story is General Electric, whose plants on the river dumped over a million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson. Jack Welch, the company’s former CEO, insists during his interview with Moyers that G.E. is doing everything it can to assure a clean Hudson River. But environmentalists argue that the key to a restored river is for General Electric to dredge the Hudson to remove the PCBs, something the company has strenuously resisted.

David Carpenter, a professor of environmental health and toxicology at the State University of New York in Albany, believes dredging is necessary. “The Hudson River is a dump,” he says. “It is a contaminated site that is not enclosed, from which PCBs are migrating to the air, to the water, to the sediments, and into the people.” But Welch believes G.E. is being demonized. “This has become a war,” he protests, “a religious war about big company polluter versus good government.” As the Moyers team finished their documentary, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered General Electric to dredge the river, but no one thinks the last chapter of this long-running saga has been written.

AMERICA’S FIRST RIVER: MOYERS ON THE HUDSON is a production of Public Affairs Television, Inc. and presented on PBS by Thirteen/WNET New York.

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