Timehost: Mr. Cronin is a battle-hardened warrior against water pollutors, small and large, on behalf of Riverkeeper, a waterways-defense organization profiled in this week's edition of TIME. Welcome, Mr. Cronin!

John Cronin: Thank you very much. Hello to everybody!

Timehost: To start things off, can you tell us a little bit about what Riverkeeper is all about and about your own work as the Hudson Riverkeeper?

John Cronin: Riverkeeper was begun by a group of sports and commercial fishermen who were just sick and tired of the condition of the Hudson River. They got the idea of hiring a riverkeeper from an old English tradition where riverkeepers patrolled trout and salmon streams for private fishing clubs. The Hudson's fishermen had their idea that they should have their own full-time riverkeeper who would patrol the river and investigate polluters on behalf of the public interest. I was hired as the nation's first full-time riverkeeper in 1983.

pipster532 asks: How would you describe your job? Do you need to know how to drive a boat? Have specific educational credentials? I'm interested in being a riverkeeper myself. My river, the Kanawha River, which goes through Charleston, WV, is in a beautiful mountain setting but clogged full of coal and chemical plant pollution.

John Cronin: My job is exciting and intriguing and it's almost never the same from week to week. I've had to do everything from set up a stake out on Christmas day at a hazardous waste site, to pulling up my boat next to Exxon tankers in the middle of the Hudson River to get samples of what they were discharging. So obviously, I do have a boat as part of my job. As far as educational credentials go, I have none that pertain to my job. I've been an activist my whole life. I was appointed riverkeeper in 1983, and I've actually been doing Hudson River environmental work since 1974. We now have 34 keeper programs around the country. And we actively assist other groups who want to set up Riverkeeper programs.

AppalachianTrail asks: What is the strangest thing you've ever seen floating in the Hudson?

John Cronin: Besides myself, probably the strangest thing I've ever seen floating in the Hudson is a very large man clinging to a very quickly deflating raft, very far from the beach he started out on. I've seen a lot of strange things on the Hudson -- most of them don't float. One example of the kind of thing we've encountered -- I've mentioned the Exxon tankers -- it's a very stange sight to see a 750-foot oil tanker anchored in broad daylight, in the middle of the Hudson, rinsing its cargo hold out. In the course of my job, I see all sorts of stange human behavior, most of it bad for the river.

riverman345 asks: What is the most dramatic battle against Hudson River polluters you have fought and won?

John Cronin: The most dramatic battle has probably been the continuing battle we've had with power plants and power utilities, and actually, I call it a war, many battles of which we have won. In the 1970's there were as many as seven nuclear power plants proposed for the valley, and activists managed to defeat them all. But there remain six power plants on the Hudson that between them kill about 100 million fish a year, and this is a national problem as well. Power plants around the nation kill about a trillion fish annually. One by one, we're forcing power plants to install fish-saving equipment, that costs tens of millions of dollars.

friday18th asks: Are companies behaving more responsibly or still trying to get away with what they can?

John Cronin: Some companies are behaving more responsibly, but greed is still the biggest enemy of the environment, whether it's government or industry, the motivation for polluting is most often monetary gain. But enforcement is our most important activity at Riverkeeper. Under the federal Clean Water Act, citizens and groups like ours have the right to force polluters into court.

Timehost: All right, we've been getting several questions about how Riverkeeper is funded, who pays your salary...could you elaborate?

John Cronin: My organization pays my salary. I'm employed by an organization called Riverkeeper, Inc. that was founded by fishermen and environmentalists on the river, and I also have a staff of ten. We have the services of a law clinic of 10 students year-round. We have to raise over a million dollars a year. So it's very expensive to go after polluters. We raise the money through normal fundraising activities.

Stamm444 asks: Do you think the EPA is a friend of river cleanups, or do they give too much slack to polluters?

John Cronin: EPA and most environmental agencies seem to be the friends of rivers when it's not too controversial. Not only the federal government, but the states give too much slack to polluters. One of the reasons that Riverkeeper has to do as much as it does is that governments are not doing their job. Not only that, but lately, most of our cases have been brought against governments. We had to bring the EPA itself into court to force the agency to regulate power plants. We had to obtain a federal court order.

Timehost: In your book with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., "The Riverkeepers," you write that the Republican right has substituted environmentalists for communists as the latest threat to democracy. Which brings us to this question...

Stamm444 asks: Do you think that a GOP victory in 2000 presidential election will be a defeat for the environmental movement?

John Cronin: In all likelihood, it would be a defeat for the environmental movement. None of the current Republican crop seems to be very interested in the environment, and in fact they seem to be sympathetic to the type of industry that aggressively fights environmental laws. Having said that, however, Al Gore has not exactly been a tiger on the environment and former Senator Bill Bradley has not displayed a lot of initiative on environmental issues either. So it's not like I have great hopes for the Democratic party either.

Louisk39 asks: If you force GE to spend $2 billion on cleanup, won't that drive NY City electricity rates up?

John Cronin: No. Because General Electic does not supply electric to anyone.

Timehost: Well, let's say, a company that does...

John Cronin: GE manufactures goods like light bulbs and heavy electrical equipment and whole range of other consumer products. GE's profits are estimated this year to be about $9 billion. And the $2 billion that the company would have to spend on a Hudson River cleanup would be spent over the course of five to 10 years. So GE can well afford to clean up the Hudson River. The problem that GE has is that the company has more than 80 other toxic sites around the nation, and is afraid that if it does the right thing on the Hudson, it will be expected to do the right thing everywhere.

Roninva98 asks: I live in Fredericsburg, VA which the Rappahanock runs through. It is one of the cleanest rivers in the U.S. Why do you think that is?

John Cronin: Well, you probably know more about the Rappahanock than I do. I assume that it doesn't have the amount of industry, or the size of population that the Hudson does. But count your blessings -- and still be vigilant!

Louisk39 asks: Are there Roverkeepers on major US rivers like the Ohio and Missouri, or just on smaller scenic rivers?

John Cronin: Well, for one, I wouldn't consider the Hudson a "smaller, scenic" river. It has a considerable amount of the US population surrounding it. But we have Riverkeepers and Baykeepers, and Soundkeepers on waterways throughout the United States whose full time job is to patrol and monitor their waterways, including San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, and the Neuse River in North Carolina. There are another 30 keepers, and we expect that this time in the year 2000, there will be 50.

dobrovlj asks: What industrial alliances have been formed to support a sustainable river system?

John Cronin: On that topic, I can speak mainly for the Hudson River. On the Hudson, we have been unable to form the kind of industrial alliances that one would like to see, where conservationists and business people work together for a sustainable river. As a matter of fact, what we're seeing on the Hudson and Long Island Sound, and Puget Sound, and Santa Monica bay, for example, is that the development and tourism industries are cashing in on many years of hard work to make these water bodies cleaner and more desirable. And there seems to be serious lack of motivation on the part of business to take real initiative. Usually what they're looking for is to negotiate compromises, rather than to take the bull by the horns and invest their own money and their own creative thinking into how to protect a river and still maintain their financial interest. I'm actually very disappointed that in the middle of the booming economy we have right now, that business leaders have not taken more initiative. Because if it's not happening now, I'm not sure that it would happen at all.

mr_chatmeister asks: Does Riverkeeper have any plans for international expansion? What is interest from environmental groups overseas? If you could get involved abroad, where would you set up camp?

John Cronin: We do have plans for keepers in other countries and we have interest right now in Australia, Ireland, and Canada. A place that would give me great pleasure to set up a program like ours would be in England, where the original concept of private riverkeepers began. Only this time, instead of just being a warden, I'd also like to see a riverkeeper there taking on polluters.

sduchak asks: What's the next big battle for Riverkeepers?

John Cronin: The next big battle for us I think is the battle that communities and environmentalists are facing all over the nation, which is uncontrolled and virtually unregulated sprawl that is resulting in record amounts of runoff pollution and destruction of habitat and loss of scenic values. One of the reasons that is such a difficult battle is because it has to be fought very locally. But we're very slowly destroying the natural diversity of many of our communties. There's hardly a community in the U.S. that didn't start out with some unique or treasured piece of the environment. But we're starting to lose all that diversity.

Timehost: We have time for just one more question....

friday18th asks: Do the Riverkeepers have a Web site?

John Cronin: Yes. www.riverkeeper.org. And on the website, you can leave your name and address and we can also send you more information, in addition to the information that's already on the Web site.

Timehost: Thank you very much for taking the time to join us tonight, Mr. Cronin. Do you have any closing thoughts you'd like to add?

John Cronin: If anybody would like to contact us by telephone, they're welcome to give us a call at 800-21-RIVER. As a closing thought, I would like everybody to remember that part of their inheritance as an American is that each person is truly a part owner of his or her local waterway. What that means is not that you can do anything you want to it, but that nobody is allowed to do anything to your waterway that diminishes your enjoyment of it. And if we don't all stand up and defend our right to protect that waterway, we'll lose both the waterway and our right to protect it. The only way to win a battle is to fight it. You will most certainly lose every battle you don't fight.

For more information on Riverkeeper, read John Cronin's profile in TIME's Heroes for the Planet series, or go to the Riverkeeper site.

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