Baykeeper's Accomplishments

Baykeeper has done much to improve the Estuary since 1990. The following is a partial list of achievements, accomplished in alliance with our many partners:

• Established the Safe Harbor Coalition in response to the 1990 Exxon/Arthur Kill oil spill, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in Natural Resource Damages recovery for the Estuary.
  
  
• Created the largest citizen water quality monitoring program in the region, with more than 150 volunteers in New York City and northern New Jersey. Program built tremendous interest in protection of the Estuary.
  
  
• Continue to be the only on-water citizen patrol presence in the Bay, with staff and more than twenty Baykeeper Auxiliary volunteers patrolling for violations.
  
  
• Two former members of the Baykeeper auxiliary are now full time Waterkeepers with their own organizations: Captain Bill Sheehan the Hackensack Riverkeeper, and Bill Schultz the Raritan Riverkeeper.
  
  
• Organized first coalition to defend the Hackensack Meadowlands, eventually resulting in the creation of the Hackensack Meadowlands Preservation Alliance, and Hackensack Meadowlands Partnership. This coalition defeated the Special Area Management Plan (SAMP) and the Mills Mall (which was to be the largest mall east of the Mississippi and built on vital wetlands).
  
  
• Advocated successfully for the establishment of the Meadowlands Conservation Trust, a public-private land trust created through NJ legislation written by Baykeeper.
  
  
• Charter member of the Waterkeeper Alliance. Baykeeper Andy Willner served on the Alliance board to oversee the growth of this international movement from seven organizations in 1992 to more than 100 in 2002.
  
  
• Partner with the American Littoral Society in Restore America's Estuaries, a national coalition originally funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, to restore habitat in selected Estuaries. Baykeeper has, as a result of this funding, created partnerships with parks departments, municipal, state and federal agencies, and citizen's groups to restore miles of stream corridor, acres of wetlands, and conduct the largest urban oyster restoration project in the country including 70 volunteer oyster gardening locations.
  
  
• Represented by Rutgers, Pace, and Columbia environmental law clinics, Baykeeper has used the citizen suit provisions in the federal Clean Water Act, RCRA, and state statutes to bring legal action against egregious public and private polluters. These successful suits have forced sewage treatment plants to upgrade and to come into compliance with their permits, and produced millions of dollars for habitat restoration and park construction through environmental benefit projects.
  
  
• Baykeeper re-invigorated the bi-state Harbor Estuary Process by playing a leadership role in the habitat, toxics, management, policy, and citizen advisory committees. The toxics work group, at Baykeeper's insistence started a bi-state toxics track-down program, while the habitat work group developed a consensus-based priority list of habitat acquisition and restoration projects based largely on Baykeeper's Blueprint for Habitat.
  
  
• Baykeeper has successfully advocated for the preservation of Liberty State Park, resulting in the defeat of several golf courses and water parks, and eventually the ouster of the ineffectual for-profit management corporation at New Jersey's most visited urban park. We established the Liberty State Park Conservancy, working with other park groups, the NJDEP, and Corps of Engineers, to restore the interior of the park as forest, wetlands, and wildflower meadows. Liberty Park has become a symbol of how citizen action can deter bad development plans.
  
  
• Baykeeper worked in coalition with Newark, NJ, youth groups, to restore sections of the Second River tributary to the Passaic.
  
  
• Baykeeper, along with a cross-harbor coalition of grassroots organizations including Save the Bay and NRPA of Staten Island, defeated a 2300 acre toxic mud island proposed by the Corps of Engineers for the most sensitive part of Raritan Bay.
  
  
• Established a thirty member "polluter pay" coalition to collect Natural Resource Damages from egregious polluters. This resulted in stepped up NJDEP efforts to bring dioxin polluter Occidental Chemical to justice. Lobbied against bills in both states that would have limited the amount and types of Natural Resource Damage claims.
  
  
• Founding member of the General Electric PCB Hudson River Clean Up coalition.
  
  
• In response to observations and reports of "subsistence" fishermen eating contaminated seafood from the harbor, Baykeeper created multi-language fish advisory brochures and a video distributed to women's health clinics and handed out at urban fishing sites. Eventually NY and NJ issued advisories.
  
  
• Baykeeper is an original participant in the Dredged Materials Management Work Group, and with Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, and NRDC, guided efforts to limit channel deepening and establish "green port" principals. As a direct result Army Corps altered its Dredged Materials Management Plan recommendations.
  
  
• Baykeeper attended the meeting at Pocantico that resulted in the establishment of the H2O concept and the H2O fund.
  
  
• Along with NRDC, Coalition for the Bight, RPA and others, we have successfully lobbied Congress and the States for millions of dollars for harbor habitat projects.
  
  
• Worked with the Port Authority to get $60 million to acquire critical habitats in New Jersey and New York City based on the HEP critical habitat lists.
  
  
• Worked with the same coalition to get the Corps of Engineers to commit to an "Everglades north" habitat restoration program.
  
  
• Baykeeper's Public Trust Doctrine campaign put this ancient common law principal in the center of the debate for the redevelopment of the region's waterfront. Through the PTD, we have defended the public's inalienable right of access, not just to the water's edge, but freely and safely fish, swim, and boat in the Estuary. This campaign started with a lawsuit in which Baykeeper was a defendant intervener in a case brought by a national homebuilders organization testing the constitutionality of NJ's Waterfront Development Act. The victory set a precedent for unfettered access to our urban waterfront. Along with the Working Waterfront Association, we are defending the public's right of access to NY City's beaches, and have begun to make the case that pollution restricts access as much or more than fences on the water's edge.
  
  
• As a result of a legal settlement in a case brought by NYDEC, Baykeeper and the American Littoral Society were able to establish a Jamaica Bay Guardian, a full time advocate to protect and preserve Jamaica Bay.
  
  
• As a result of a law suit brought against NYC DEP for violations of nitrogen limits, Baykeeper and Long Island Soundkeeper will oversee the distribution of more than $4 million for environmental benefit projects in Jamaica Bay, the East River and Long Island Sound. These monies have already been used to establish pumpout boats on the Sound and on Jamaica Bay.
  
  
• With our partners, Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense, Rutgers University Environmental Law Clinic, Hackensack Riverkeeper, and Columbia University Environmental Law Clinic, (and dozens of other individuals and groups throughout the region) Baykeeper began a process to establish a Hudson-Raritan Conservancy - the principles of which continue to guide the identification and acquisition of urban habitats which were previously not considered by federal, state, county, municipal, or private land trusts.
  
  
• Through conferences, meetings, and celebrations, Baykeeper has shone a spotlight on the Hudson-Raritan Estuary, and brought diverse groups, including commercial interests and environmentalists, together in a shared vision. We've helped spread the idea that the Estuary is our home, that its bounty is what brought us all to this region, and that we must leave the Estuary better for our children.