BEACON – On the Beacon waterfront Friday, Assemblyman Jonathan Jacobson (D, Newburgh) presented $30,000 to the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater to enhance its educational programming.
“Too many people forget that 50 years ago, the Hudson was dead. It was polluted. It was terrible,” said Jacobson. (Clearwater, through their education initiatives, remind people and inspire new generations to preserve our legacy.”
The sloop, a replica of the kind that once hauled cargo on the Hudson, was docked quietly nearby. But when it’s not docked during the warmer months of the year, it is on the river with passengers and school groups, educating them and highlighting the Hudson River’s resurgence from a filthy waterway decades ago to one now under better human stewardship.
“We get people out on the river,” said Dave Toman, executive director of Hudson River Clearwater Sloop. “We get them to learn about different stations of environmental interest and education, including species living in the water. It gives them a connection to the improvements that have taken place in the Hudson and also the concern to make sure we take care of it long into the future and for our kids.”
