Promising Future?

The Hudson River Estuary Action Agenda 2005-2009 has an extremely optimistic view of the river in the years to come. Lately we have focused on so many negative aspects of the river from PCB’s to other types of pollution. Therefore after reading this agenda for the Hudson River, I feel that a lot of the expectations look good on paper but are not possibly, especially with their 2020 deadline. Their ideas and view of the future look promising but not to the extent of their lofty goals. Many of the Agenda call for the education of hundreds of people to work with the river. My question to this is why do they need to educate regular citizens on being on charge of cleaning many of the river’s huge problems such as pollution? Why are they not hiring the already educated professionals to fix up the Hudson? Their education of the students in the Hudson Valley schools is a great start to the future of the river. If the younger generations learn at a young age to go to the river on field trips and care about it, then when they are older they will not want to do harm to the Hudson.
My biggest problem with this agenda is their goal to make the water quality good enough for swimming from the Adirondacks all the way to New York City. People are so turned away right now with all the negativity on the Hudson stemming from the PCB’s and the harm GE has done to the water. If the water is not healthy enough to eat the fish out of it, how would one want to swim in the water? I think there is no chance for this to happen by the year 2020; maybe some day down the road when there is newer technology to clean up the river, then it could be a possibility. To get this cleanup done in time for the 400th anniversary, then they will have to really work hard and get all the businesses and organizations to work together and fast. If everyone devotes a lot of time especially on the little things that can be done by households, and let the big corporations spend the big bucks for the major projects like PCB’s then significant progress can be made. The future looks promising but not as promising as the agenda is looking for by 2020.