The Shame of the Shatemuc

Compared to the Mississippi or the Missouri, the 306-mile-long Hudson is a whippersnapper waterway. Nonetheless, there is not a river on the continent that surpasses it in natural beauty; the great Karl Baedeker called its vistas "grander and more inspiring" than the Rhine's. Nor has any other American stream earned so rich a place in the nation's history, art and folklore. Yet the Shatemuc, "the water that flows both ways," as the Algonquin Indians called it, today is the most wantonly abused river in the U.S., its banks in many places a riparian slum, its waters a running sewer.

Last week a New York commission proposed that something--finally--be done about the Hudson. Headed and partly financed by Governor Nelson Rockefeller's conservation-minded brother Laurance, the commission urged that New York and New Jersey (which has 21 miles of the river's west bank) join with the Federal Government to form a Hudson River authority with major responsibility for cleaning up the river and ensuring orderly growth in the broad Hudson Valley. Estimated cost: $1.3 billion.

Brotherly Accord. Though a vital feature of the valley's rehabilitation would be public acquisition of some 100,000 acres at 150 scenic points (cost: $100 million), most of the commission's recommendations could be carried out through effective coordination of already existing programs, including New York's own $1 billion water-pollution campaign. Scenic easements, under which a property owner would be granted tax concessions if he agreed to keep his land undeveloped, could hold back industry from the shoreline and crowning highlands, at the same time keep the countryside in private hands. Intelligent zoning could induce subdividers to arrange houses in clusters rather than wasteful grids and to follow the natural contour of the land instead of flattening it with the bulldozer.

Most heartening to conservationists was the commission's condemnation of Consolidated Edison's plan for a huge hydroelectric power plant at the base of brooding Storm King Mountain, at the famed north gate to the majestic Hudson Highlands.* Governor Rockefeller, who had earlier supported the $162 million Con Ed project, backed off after his brother criticized it, said that "if another solution can be found, it should be." The commission chided local government for failure to request federal beautification and urban-renewal money, noted that the latter could open up rotting waterfronts and create little "fishermen's wharves" along the river.

"Not Enough." The commission eschewed "czarlike powers" for the proposed Hudson authority, would indeed give it little more than the power of persuasion. Some conservationists contended that this might not be sufficient for an eleventh-hour rescue mission. Democratic Representative Richard Ottinger, who was elected on a plank of restoring the Hudson Valley, said that "with respect to the ambitions of certain special-interest groups, this is not enough." It was at least a hopeful beginning.

* A U.S. Court of Appeals recently ordered the Federal Power Commission to review its approval of the plant so as to give greater weight to the project's effect on the environment, marking the first occasion on which the FPC has been told to weigh the technical need for a utility against its effect on the scenery, fisheries or other equally relevant conservation considerations.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.