Family history also drives Kennedy, who has the civil rights
spirit of his father. "To me," he says, "this is a struggle of
good and evil--between short-term greed and ignorance and a
long-term vision of building communities that are dignified and
enriching and that meet the obligations to future generations.
There are two visions of America. One is that this is just a
place where you make a pile for yourself and keep moving. And the
other is that you put down roots and build communities that are
examples to the rest of humanity."
I ask him, "Why choose this front rather than other humanitarian
battles?"
"To me," he says, "the environment cannot be separated from the
economy, housing, civil rights and human rights. How we
distribute the goods of the earth is the best measure of our
democracy." He gestures at the open water. "It's not about
advocating for fishes and birds. It's about human rights."
Accordingly, their vision of nature is as realistic as it is
romantic. Kennedy says he has seen an adorable-looking otter
torture a catfish by biting off its scales on one side, making it
swim in circles.
On the river, these two behave toward each other with the casual
care of brothers; they intuit each other's presence, but they
rarely speak, except in a code born of their joint mission and of
the fact that "we talk 10 times a day." One will say, "Smith
called. He didn't like what we wrote." The other will say, "Did
you read what the EPA said yesterday... Once they acknowledge
that, they're screwed." I have no idea what they're talking
about, but everything has the tone of frontline bulletins.
Standing beside Kennedy near the bow, I realize he looks like a
Kennedy. He has made me forget his lineage until, as part of
something else he is saying, he adds, "when my uncle was in the
White House."
As we head upriver, away from the power plants, I ask whether the
river, let alone, would repair itself. Not always, they say. The
toxic industrial chemicals known as PCBs, which were discharged
into the river by General Electric plants until the company
agreed to stop, do not biodegrade; they have to be removed.
Pollutants have a cumulative effect--what Cronin calls "the death
of a thousand cuts." An individual polluter says, "What I alone
am doing is not harming this river," which may be so. But Kennedy
and Cronin insist the plants that we passed--four in five
minutes--are working together, even if they adhere to EPA
standards, to slowly destroy the estuary ecosystem.
Different pollutants work differently. Some, such as PCBs, are
subtle. A female striped bass produces 6 million eggs in a
lifetime. If some die from PCBs, it won't be noticed. But humans
are also affected when they eat fish contaminated by PCBs; the
chemicals can cause cancer and disrupt the functioning of
hormones in the body. Other forms of pollution, like nitrate and
phosphate runoff from farms, kill the ecosystem by starving fish.
These nutrient pollutants are found in fertilizer and in sewage,
and they cause excessive growth of aquatic plants when they hit
the water. Algae, during their natural course of life, die and
sink to the bottom, where they are devoured by bacteria, which
use oxygen. Too many algae deprive fish of oxygen.
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