CARP: The Perfect Dish for an Environmentally Friendly Hudson

In Dennis J Suszowski and Christopher F. D’Delia’s paper The History and Science of Managing the Hudson River, the two authors discuss a number of environmental issues that are affecting the river as well a number of other connected bodies of water. In response to these environmental issues a group of environmental organizations have sprung up. The rise in environmental groups over the past half a century has given way to government reform and more governmental regulation on polluters at the federal, state, municipal and regional levels.

One such organization is Contamination Assessment and Reduction Project. CARP was formed to focus on the power of governmental oversight in the area of contaminant reduction, which they believed to be minimal at best.

Today CARP is “perhaps the largest and most ambitious contaminant assessment effort ever undertaken” (p. 328). The management committee which runs it has representatives from ten different organizations all with the common interest of analyzing the contamination of the Hudson and then getting rid of it.

The power behind CARP comes from those ten different organizations. The groups involved in CARP represent a wide array of views and size from the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, to New Jersey Maritime Resources, as well as the New York Department of Environmental Conservation. By brining their combined power and resources to CARP they are able to give it tremendous funding and achieve tremendous success. If real progress on the environmental front is ever going to happen it’s going to be through the combined efforts of numerous organizations, and CARP provides a fantastic template from which to start.