Riverkeeper Lights Up the Empire State Building

Hall of Fame New York Rangers Goalie Mike Richter, Paul Gallay, president of Riverkeeper, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the advocacy group's chief prosecuting attorney, flipped the switch at the Empire State Building Wednesday to make the tower lights shine in its own colors.

It's all in honor of Riverkeeper’s 50th anniversary.

Riverkeeper is celebrating a half-century of protecting the Hudson River, its tributaries, and New York City’s drinking water.

Here's the Ossining-based environmental organization's history:

Riverkeeper traces its origins back to March 1966, when a small group of recreational and commercial fishermen, concerned citizens and scientists gathered at a Westchester County American Legion Hall with the intent to reverse the decline of the Hudson River. They organized as the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, and dedicated themselves to tracking down the river’s polluters and bringing them to justice.

Right from the start, the grassroots actions taken by the HRFA went against convention. While other organizations sought environmental justice through protests and civil disobedience, the HRFA sought to protect the Hudson through advocacy, science and the law.

At the group’s core was a belief that everyday people should be able to defend our public resources from maltreatment and damage.

The Fishermen’s actions to protect the water demonstrated that ordinary citizens had legal standing in protecting our natural resources. A long string of legal victories — which provided the HRFA with bounties for turning in polluters — funded the creation of the Riverkeeper program in 1983. Three years later, HRFA merged with Riverkeeper to form one group to protect the river.

Since then, Riverkeeper has brought hundreds of polluters to justice and forced them to spend hundreds of millions of dollars remediating the Hudson. Over its long history, Riverkeeper has worked to restore the river from harmful PCBs, sought to protect aquatic life from pollution and ill-considered development, and has worked to close the aging, troublesome Indian Point nuclear power plant on the banks of the Hudson.

Today Riverkeeper fights with thousands of citizen scientists and activists to reclaim the Hudson and ensure that over 9 million New Yorkers have clean, safe drinking water. The result: Pollution levels are down, and swimming and boating are back. Riverkeeper inspired the worldwide waterkeeper movement protecting tens of thousands of miles of rivers and coastlines on six continents.

PHOTO/Bill Cruse