Riverkeeper Inc.

“Members participate in organization's governance at the annual membership meeting in june. They elect members to the board of directors.”

“At each membership annual meeting thereafter, a number of directors equal to that of those who terms have expired will be elected by a plurality of the members for a term of three years and the earliest of the election or appointment and qualification of such director's successor or until such director's death, resignation, or removal. At the expiration of any term of three years, any director may be elected. Candidates for election as directors will be nominated by the nominating committee. Members of the corporation who desire to nominate a member to the board of directors, in addition to those candidates proposed by the nominating committee, may do so on a petition signed by not less than one hundred members and delivered to the secretary of the corporation not less than six months prior to the annual meeting of the members. No more than one petition for election shall be accepted and therefore, if more than one petition is submitted, the submission with the greatest number of signatures will apply; in the case of a more than one petition with equal number of signatures, the petition first submitted will be accepted.”

“Form 990 was reviewed by robin meadows, chief financial and operating officer, tracy brown, president and riverkeeper, and board of directors treasurer, martin hampel.”

“On a yearly basis, the board of directors meet to complete a "conflict of interest" acknowledgement which documents and signifies that no current conflict of interest exists between the board members and outside organizations. At each subsequent meeting, before any decisions are made, it is clarified that there is no conflict of interest for anyone in the room. If there is a conflict, that person will be excluded from the decision.”

“Prior external benchmarking conducted by external consultants was reviewed and used as input in determining staff salaries. Prior external benchmarking conducted by external consultants was reviewed and helped inform board leadership on organization's ceo's compensation.”

“Riverkeeper makes its governing documents, conflict of interest policy, and financial statements available to the public upon request.”

“Riverkeeper's mission is to protect and restore the hudson river from source to sea and safeguard drinking water supplies, through advocacy rooted in community partnerships, science, and law. We envision a future in which the hudson river and its tributaries from brooklyn to the adirondacks, as well as new york city's drinking watershed, are restored to ecological health and balance; free-flowing, resilient, and teeming with life; reliable sources of safe, clean drinking water; recovered from historic and inequitable environmental harms; safe and accessible for swimming, fishing, boating and other recreational activities; and valued and stewarded by all. Working with hundreds of partners at all levels, riverkeeper has achieved remarkable successes over the years including securing a ban on fracking in new york, removing more than 380 tons of trash from our waterfront and shorelines, closing the indian point nuclear plant, to launching a water quality program that tests thousands of water samples annually for harmful bacteria. When riverkeeper started our work in 1966, the hudson was an industrial sewer, polluted and contaminated almost beyond recognition. People had turned away from the river and our drinking water was threatened. Today, the hudson and its tributaries are increasingly important to new yorkers for recreation and enjoyment. People swim in the length of the river, new waterfront parks and marine sanctuaries have been created and are thriving, bringing whales, seals, and dolphins back to the new york harbor. And the new york drinking water system is still the envy of the world.”

“Habitat restoration and water quality riverkeeper's habitat restoration and water quality program focuses on restoring life and vitality to the hudson, and carefully monitoring the continued health of the river. We do this by coordinating community science efforts to gather environmental data from the hudson and its tributaries; engaging grassroots and community-level partners in the protection of water resources and aquatic species; advocating for pollution reduction and ecological improvement projects locally and statewide, especially the removal of obsolete dams; and advocating for protecting water (particularly drinking water) at its source through effective watershed management. This past fiscal year, we planted 105 native trees and shrubs at the site of a semi-collapsed dam along little falls, a stream adjacent to the walsh road dam on the quassaick creek in new windsor, ny. Presently, our team has sediment sampling scheduled for this fall on 5 dams targeted for removal. Biological surveys of fish communities upstream and downstream of 10 dams of interest will be conducted in spring 2025. Through these efforts, we are beginning to build a comprehensive understanding of the toxic legacy left on our watershed by these outdated and ecologically damaging pieces of infrastructure and what will need to be done to restore the affected habitats to their prior natural state. In addition to scientific research, community participation and support is essential for habitat restoration work to move forward. This past year, we planned and executed over 14 public outreach events on this issue, including but not limited to creek tours, a community kayak event, as well as tree planting and maintenance days. Approximately 650 people were directly served by our habitat restoration outreach over the course of the year. Habitat restoration progress continues as we have one shovel-ready project, two primary barriers in the design and permitting phase, and two additional 'right to remove agreements' with property owners for future dam removals. On the water quality side, through our community science program we collected and analyzed samples from 196 hudson river and tributary sites, in collaboration with academic partners and riverkeeper volunteers. This work allows us to build a holistic picture of the health of our watershed, and spot trends and points of vulnerability. We also carried out several special projects related to water quality with the help of partner groups. We are building on the success of the source to estuary program, a field trip based curriculum where youth are able to learn about their drinking water sources, where they come from, where they go, and what happens to them along their route. We now run this course in conjunction with our lab based job training program for youth in troy, ny, and brought the course to kingston for the first time with the kingston ymca farm project. In addition, we sampled in the esopus creek watershed to assist with reopening a beach and shaping the lower esopus creek stream management plan to include a septic system assessment to address water quality concerns related to our sampling results. Building on our work in the mohawk river watershed with our academic partners we partnered with dec for a first of its kind joint sampling program for fecal indicator bacteria to have tributaries to the mohawk river listed for any impairments that are found. To conduct the sampling we hired an intern out of union college who worked with our academic partners at union college and suny cobleskill, providing valuable job training and experience.”

“Advocacy and patrols riverkeeper's advocacy and patrols program advances our water, habitat and public health protection and restoration efforts through public engagement and policy making. Our presence as a 'watchdog on the water' provides a platform to investigate pollution concerns and give decisionmakers perspective from the water. Our advocacy efforts identify legislation, regulation, enforcement, budget allocations and programs that can address restoration and protection goals in the hudson river watershed and its communities. We advocate for priority policies through grassroots advocacy, collaboration with other organizations and governments at all levels, and lobbying. Our patrol boat, the r. Ian fletcher, maintained riverkeeper's long standing presence on the hudson river, mohawk river and ny nj harbor through august 2023, when it came off the water for engine repairs. In its absence, riverkeeper continued patrols in the sun hill, a smaller trailered vessel. Riverkeeper's new vessel, the bob boyle named for a founder of the organization was launched in may 2024, providing on-water presence and support of the water quality sampling program. Riverkeeper also partnered with other organizations with boats, including ny/nj baykeeper, raritan riverkeeper, hudson river maritime museum and american littoral society to provide decision makers with the on-water perspectives. Riverkeeper hosted a number of decision makers, including staff of the department of environmental conservation and nys office of parks recreation and historic preservation, a member of congress and staff members of other congressional officials, new york state senators and a new york state assemblyperson. We also hosted jon bowermaster, who is filming for a hudson river-focused short aimed at a national audience, and other media professionals. Riverkeeper's governmental affairs efforts included frequent meetings with state and federal legislators and their staff members, the staff of governor kathy hochul, ngos and others engaged in state legislative efforts. Riverkeeper organized two "advocacy days" for staff, board and partners to engage in lobbying, and a bipartisan lobbying trip to washington, d.c., where riverkeeper staff met with the offices of 13 u.s. Representatives and three u.s. Senators. Our lobbying efforts were successful on a range of priorities, including the signing into law of the save the hudson, living shorelines, flood disclosure and risk reduction acts; the passage by nys legislature of green roof tax abatement and the petroleum safety and surety acts; the elimination of proposed cuts to the clean water infrastructure act and hudson river estuary program; and the funding of the ny swims program. Our governmental affairs efforts also secured the support of legislators to influence regulatory and programmatic decisions on a range of issues, including the decommissioning of the indian point nuclear reactors, the cleanup of pcb contamination in the hudson river, the siting and regulation of industrial anchorages in the hudson river, and the planning for resilience measures in and around new york city. Our grassroots advocacy campaigns achieved significant milestones, including commitments by the department of defense to identify and implement interim remedial measures for contamination at stewart air national guard base in support of our "speed up the cleanup" campaign; a commitment by new york city to reduce turbidity in releases from the ashokan reservoir to the esopus creek in support of our "stop the mud" campaign, and others. We advanced regional goals through membership or leadership roles on the hudson river estuary, ny/nj harbor & estuary, and mohawk basin programs. Riverkeeper led or participated in a number of planning efforts, including developing or implementing drinking water source protection plans for the hudson 7 communities, peekskill, kingston and orangeburg. We coordinated and participated in a range of coalitions, board”

“Legal and energy riverkeeper's legal program advances the cause of clean water through pursuing litigation, submitting comments on agency actions, and educating the public. Broadly speaking, our legal program is dedicated to remediating historic pollution and ensuring that new sources of pollution are prevented from further contaminating the hudson. This year, we filed or continued to pursue a total of 11 litigation campaigns. These included suits against both the us environmental protection agency and the new york state department of environmental conservation for failing to protect the health of people who swim, boat and fish in new york city waters; a petition to compel new york city to follow the law and notify residents of sewage discharges into city waterways in a timely manner; and a lawsuit demanding a full alternatives analysis for the proposed laguardia airtrain. We also pursued lawsuits against companies for unlawful discharges of polluted industrial stormwater, along with other pollution violations. Across these cases as a whole, we drove protections for water quality and secured $455,000 in environmental benefit payments to support sustainable agricultural practices. Aside from these cases, our team of in-house lawyers works with others on our staff on many other campaigns. Of particular focus this past year, we pushed for the full remediation of pcb contamination in the hudson river, caused by general electric; watchdogged the decommissioning of the indian point nuclear power facility through our seat on the state's decommissioning oversight board; helped prevent the siting of new polluting facilities that would discharge to the hudson or its tributaries; and provided positive community technical support for communities to ensure thorough superfund cleanups. Our legal staff also focus heavily on fighting pollution from stormwater runoff and combined sewer overflows (csos). We joined community partners in championing renewable rikers, a project that would construct renewable energy infrastructure and a state-of-the art wastewater treatment plant on rikers island that would reduce csos and improve water quality. In tandem with these efforts, we fought new permits for unsustainable energy plants in manhattan and newburgh, engaged in negotiations to ensure the proposed clean path ny electric transmission cable would have the least possible impact on the hudson river and its tributaries, shaped new york's regulations to better protect wetlands, and stopped a coast guard proposal that would have allowed ships and barges to anchor anywhere in the hudson north of tappan zee bridge. We also continued a project to highlight risks to drinking water, targeted at improving state programs focused on source-water protection and adaptation planning.”