Issue overview
The Hudson River and its hundreds of tributaries are not only a vast ecological marvel, but also a place to connect with the natural world, a critical source of food and drinking water, a home for fish and wildlife, and a key economic driver for the state. Our work helps protect and restore these waters through monitoring, analysis, advocacy, and legal action.
How’s the water?
The Hudson River was historically treated as a dumping ground for industrial and municipal waste. However, thanks to vigilant advocacy and monitoring efforts, water quality has improved markedly in recent years.
In addition to our work mitigating contamination and protecting water quality, we offer reliable, current, and publicly available data that helps anglers, boaters, and swimmers make informed decisions about how and when to safely recreate on the river.
What we’re doing about it
Despite vast improvements in water quality across the region, more work remains in order to hold polluters accountable, protect the watershed, and ensure that the Hudson is fishable, drinkable, and swimmable for all. Community advocacy, local watchdog efforts, and statewide collaboration on legislation and data collection are all key to restoring our waters and keeping the communities that rely on them safe from harm.
Riverkeeper and our allies have fought tirelessly for decades to ensure the Hudson's waters are safe and clean for our communities and our wildlife. It is easier to destroy a river than it is to restore one, but both those powers are in our hands. Every day we decide anew the future of this living river.
Tracy Brown
President and Hudson Riverkeeper
Featured campaigns
Understanding current conditions and water quality trends is critical to our work supporting clean and healthy water. Our extensive ongoing monitoring program provides those critical insights.
Water quality monitoring
Riverkeeper is the go-to source for information about the quality of the water along the Hudson River and its tributaries
Hudson River PCBs
Without effective action, the health risks and impacts to those living, working, and playing within the 200-mile stretch of the Hudson River PCBs Superfund Site will persist for generations to come
Remediating and preventing contamination
Cleaning up decades of pollution and preventing more requires scientific understanding, targeted legal action, and sustained advocacy
Swimming and public access
Working to make it safe and free for everyone to swim in the Hudson
Beyond Indian Point
Monitoring the shutdown of a nuclear power plant on the banks of the Hudson that killed billions of fish each year
Sewer and stormwater pollution
Working to keep sewage and street pollution out of our waterways