Food & Water Watch: Over the past few decades, grassroots groups have worked tirelessly to restore New York’s majestic Hudson River. Then they found out about a plan to add something the Hudson certainly doesn’t need: Massive barges carrying fracked oil.

This dangerous idea was proposed by the Coast Guard, at the behest of the New York-New Jersey Maritime Association. The vision is to add ten new anchorage grounds to accommodate 43 vessels from Yonkers to Kingston, which would encourage tankers to increase oil shipments along the river.

The same groups that have fought hard to clean up the Hudson took action. And in the eleventh hour of the legislative session, Albany lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of bills to help block this anti-environmental plan.

Led by Scenic Hudson, a network of environmental organizations including Riverkeeper, Food & Water Watch, Sierra Club Lower Hudson, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Natural Resources Defense Council, the Audubon Society, and the New York League of Conservation Voters, spoke out against the proposal. We spearheaded a campaign urging the New York State Legislature to pass bills A.6825A and S.5197B to protect the towns along the river. The legislation expands New York State’s jurisdiction over the siting of oil barges on the Hudson River by enabling the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to create ‘Tanker Avoidance Zones’ based on the presence of significant habitats, and the concerns of waterfront communities.  Read more.