Power on the Hudson: Storm King Mountain and the Emergence of Modern American Environmentalism

INTRODUCTION: Environmentalism, Energy, and the Hudson River Valley

1 INTRODUCTION Environmentalism, Energy, and the Hudson River Valley The story of the Storm King Mountain power project involves three things, each of which was undergoing tremendous change in the 1960s and 1970s: environmentalism , energy, and the Hudson River valley. Some historical background on these topics reveals how they influenced the struggle over the Storm King project. ENVIRONMENTALISM There has been considerable disagreement among historians as to how to define and describe environmentalism in the United States. The term itself did not come into common usage until the late 1960s, but a growing number of historians have argued that there existed forms of environmental activism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, even if the word environmentalism was not used to describe this activism.1 One context in which historians have found an early form of environmental activism is the struggle against urban pollution. As long as cities have existed , they have had to deal with the problem of refuse and waste. This problem intensified as modern industrial cities increased in population density and affluence . The early years of the twentieth century witnessed the development of an urban environmental awareness. At this time, the impact of industrializa- 2 ■ INTRODUCTION tion, including crowded slums, congested streets, poor sanitation, smoky skies, bone-rattling noise, and tainted water supplies, was more clearly visible, and it was addressed by a politicized middle class. Industrial cities—the products of economic determinism and rapid demographic change rather than planning— presented an image that understandably led many people to conclude that the only way to deal with urban life was to escape it.2 Urban reformers waged anti-smoke, anti-noise, and anti-litter campaigns through emerging civic groups. Relying on experts to provide scientific solutions , these community activists organized publicity campaigns that pressured local government to pass ordinances aimed at reducing pollution. These early reformers responded to pollution conservatively; they did not abandon the idea of material progress through industrial production and economic growth for the sake of a clean environment. Rather, their solution avoided questioning industrial progress itself by concluding that pollution was the result of wasteful and inefficient production techniques, and they therefore emphasized increased efficiency and effectiveness. The reformers’ promotion of good health, sanitation, and pollution control also had strong aesthetic overtones. Civic pride became associated with urban beauty, and pollution undermined those aesthetic resources. The emergence of the City Beautiful movement in the 1890s provided the rhetoric for equating the elimination of pollution with an idealized city aesthetic.3 Americans at the turn of the twentieth century already understood that urban pollution did affect health and well-being. A growing body of recent scholarship examines the specific connections between human health, disease, and environment . These connections were an important source of the environmentalism that arose after World War II and serve as a materialist basis for the arguments early twentieth-century preservationists made in defense of nature (discussed below).4 Historians have also looked at the desire to preserve wilderness and aesthetically pleasing landscapes as another form of environmental activity. This effort has long been associated with the conservation movement. Conservationism arose amid the concern that the waters and forests of the country were being used in wasteful ways. This reform movement sought to bring rationality and management to the development of natural resources. Features of this effort included engineering works to manage rivers, sustained-yield forest management, irrigation projects in the West, reservoir construction (to enhance electric power production), navigation improvements, and flood control. These ideas and practices became firmly established during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, and in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration they found new vigor as many New Deal programs put people to work on river, public land, and wildlife development projects.5 Yet, there existed a tension within the conservation movement. Some believed that the best use of a particular piece of land was to exclude industry al- INTRODUCTION ■ 3 together, to set some parcels of land aside as preserves. A powerful argument that resonated during the Progressive era was the idea that there existed some places so beautiful that they represented God’s work on earth and should not be interrupted or destroyed by humans. In this argument, these places provided an opportunity for people to bear witness to the hand of God.6 Advocates for this position were known as preservationists, a dissident group within the larger conservation movement.7 Preservationists advocated on behalf...