Walkway Across the Hudson: Flow River, Flow

Good Morning Gina,

Yesterday Beth and I drove to the Mid-Hudson region to visit the FDR Library and the Walkway Over the Hudson.  A great trip: a fun day together, good exploring, and very educational!

After spending the afternoon at the FDR Museum we both agreed on the importance of knowing history and understanding context as we shape our judgments and opinions.

The Walkway experience was a wonderful combination of "adaptive reuse" (of an old railroad bridge, now used for education and recreation), industrial archaeology, and environmental insights.

We are game!

Walking way above water!

The Walkway is 1.2 miles across the Hudson just north of Poughkeepsie.  There are "info-tainment" placards placed at regular intervals along the railing, including celebratory "River Reborn" images:

Do not eat any of this!

No one is a bigger booster of River Power than me but, jeeze, come on, we are far from being able to declare the "river reborn," as these posters state.

In fact, I found these facts on the EPA website.

We all agree this is an important clean-up project.  The very fact so much has been done is a testimony to that.

The goal cannot be 100% PCB-free.  

That is unrealistic.  

But -- if we know that hundreds of thousands of pounds of PCBs remain in the Hudson we must know where they are -- we can and must do better.

Please.

Flow River, Flow: our "front yard" in Northumberland last night