Connected through Time and Tides

Join Clearwater as we celebrate our community and the river that connects us. This year's Spirit of the Hudson Gala will honor dedicated individuals who have made a lasting impact on the Hudson River and those living along its shores. Let's ride the tides as we celebrate 55 years of bringing communities together for the betterment of the Hudson River through education, advocacy, and music. Whether you live in Albany or New York City, are new to Clearwater, or have been with us for decades- we are all connected through time and tides.

Honorees 

Dr. Stuart E.G. Findlay
Spirit of the Hudson Award

The Clearwater Spirit of the Hudson Award is given annually by Hudson River Sloop Clearwater to recognize and honor extraordinary contributions to the protection and celebration of the Hudson River and its watershed by individuals who exemplify the values and spirit of Clearwater's co-founder, Pete Seeger. 

Clearwater is pleased to present the 2024 Spirit of the Hudson Award to Dr. Stuart E.G. Findlay. Stuart Findlay has worked on the Hudson River for over 30 years. His research on sensitive wetlands, shoreline restoration, and environmental monitoring is helping to guide the river's recovery.

Human activities can have positive and negative consequences on the environment. It is important to reinforce the positive through effective management, while rapidly detecting and mitigating the negative. Findlay aims to identify impending problems and devise suitable solutions in streams, wetlands, and the Hudson River.

Aquatic vegetation provides essential nutrients and habitat for small animals, yet these plants are threatened by human-induced habitat alterations, including climate change. To improve the management, protection, and restoration of aquatic systems, it is essential to know how environmental conditions influence these communities and what humans can do to support them.

Findlay works closely with the Hudson River Environmental Conditions Observing System (HRECOS) and directed the installation of a monitoring station that continually records the river's salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, and water elevation - a key management tool to facilitate a quick response to threats such as harmful contaminants or floods. He also studies the impacts of shoreline modification and guides sustainable management practices to protect native species and their habitats.

Findlay is committed to carrying science from discovery to dissemination and is actively engaged with a wide array of management, outreach, and educational programs. He has been an advisor to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for more than 25 years and works with several other private, state, and federal organizations.

 
Manna Jo Greene
Lifetime Contribution to Clearwater Award

The Lifetime Contribution to Clearwater award recognizes the profound impact of Clearwater's founders, volunteers, board, crew, and staff over the organization's lifetime.

As a life-long organizer, Manna Jo Greene began her organizing efforts as a teenager, working with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders for the passage of the Civil Rights Bill, an experience setting the course for her activism. Manna also first encountered Clearwater as a teenager at a Pete Seeger concert, and volunteered with Toshi as a Litter Picker at the Great Hudson River Revival for many years. That experience led to her becoming Ulster County's Recycling Coordinator/Educator in 1990 where she took Ulster County's recycling rate from 4% to 40% in a decade. She returned to the organization, joining the Board in 1998, and two years later stepped into her current role as Environmental Action Director.

As Environmental Action Director since 2000, Manna Jo spearheaded Clearwater's engagement in environmental issues for over 20 years. A tireless advocate for the Hudson River and communities in its watershed, Manna was a founder of the Hudson River Watershed Alliance, the Rondout Creek Watershed Council, now Rondout Creek Watershed Alliance, and coordinator of the Fallkill Creek Planning process. Additionally, Manna Jo has been a regional leader for decades on the effort to close the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant in Buchanan, NY, and ensure the safest possible decommissioning.

Located 25 miles north of New York City along the Hudson River, the plant, which closed in April 2021 after 59 years of operation, remains an ecological and public safety threat to the region. Given the sustained threat the facility poses, Manna also championed the need for a citizen oversight board.  Knowing that Indian Point would soon be closing, in 2017 the Indian Point Convergence developed a proposal for a Community Oversight Board and submitted it to New York State Senator Peter Harckham and former Assembly Member Sandy Galef, who drafted legislation to create a New York State Decommissioning Oversight Boards for retiring nuclear power plants within one month of their closure. The legislation (A10236) passed both houses, but was modified by Governor Cuomo who issued an Executive Order directing the Public Service Commission to establish the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board in December 2020.

Manna Jo was also a long-time advocate for the remediation of the Hudson River from General Electric's PCB contamination, which was actively discharged into the Hudson River between 1947 and 1977 when at long last, the chemical was banned. A known carcinogen, PCBs pollute the sediment and accumulate up the food chain into fish tissue across 200 miles of the Hudson River. Early in Manna's tenure, Clearwater was part of a successful effort to urge Governor Pataki to encourage then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman to meet with members of the Friends of a Clean Hudson coalition.

The Friends of a Cleaner Hudson coalition traveled to Washington, D.C. in 2001 to meet with Administrator Whitman and convey the need for PCB remediation in the Hudson River. Within several weeks of the coalition's visit, EPA announced that it would require General Electric to clean up the Hudson River PCB contamination and issued a consent order in early 2002 requiring GE to undertake remediation, which occurred from 2005 (design phase) and from 2009 to 2016, when 40 miles of the upper Hudson River from Hudson Falls to Troy we're dredged. Without federal action, the remedial measures undertaken by GE would not have occurred. Since then, Manna Jo has continued to represent Clearwater on the Community Advisory Group overseeing the Hudson River's superfund cleanup.

 
Another major contribution Manna made while serving as Clearwater's environmental Action Director was to help create a robust Green Cities program that focuses on Environmental and Climate Justice, working with priority communities in several Hudson River towns. With a staff of five people, funded by a grant from the NYS DEC Office of Environmental Justice, they created groundbreaking community-based environmental justice and climate Justice Inventories for Peekskill, Beacon, Poughkeepsie and Kingston.  Pete Seeger said that he believed that program was the most important work Clearwater could be doing to keep relevant into the future.

Before joining Clearwater, Manna Jo spent a decade as the Recycling Coordinator and Educator for the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, the Recycling Coordinator at the Town and SUNY/New Paltz, and as a registered critical care nurse and a maternity nurse. She also served on the Rosendale Town Council from 2006-2013, and has been a member of the Ulster County Legislature since 2014, where she currently serves on the Energy, Environment, and  Sustainability Committee and  the UCRRA Reform Committee and chairs the Climate Smart Committee.  She is also leading a Working Group to create a Renewable Energy

Xiell Owens 
Next Generation Environmental Leaders Award

The Next Generation Environmental Leaders Award celebrates the efforts of a young person or group of youth (under age 30) who are actively working to protect or steward the ecological world. We recognize the important role the next generation plays in shaping the future of the Hudson River and our planet.

This year, Clearwater is proud to announce the recipient of our newest award, Xiell Owens. Xiell Owens is an Ecojustice Associate at the Radix Ecological Sustainability Center, an urban ecological literacy and just sustainabilities advocacy non-profit organization based in the South End of Albany. Xiell's work has included gardening, composting, mushroom cultivation, Hudson River Regeneration, food redistribution, and tree planting in the South End of Albany. Within his work and life, Xiell has had a deep commitment to justice and equity and serves as a role model for his peers. 

 Special Guests

TBD
Musician - Mission Song

 
Judith Tulloch and Friends
Musician

Judith Tulloch was born in Manhattan and raised in Brooklyn N.Y. It was there as a child that she discovered her passion for music. Rooted in Jazz, classical, and rock styles, she began to pursue her musical dreams of being a performer. Through her travels she had the opportunity to see and perform in many different places, from New Orleans, to Seattle, the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, South East Asia, Iceland, Europe and Africa. Now living in the Hudson Valley of New York, Judith performs with her band in the tri-state area, and is currently a music teacher in Orange County.

Pop, soft rock, & world music. With vocals, guitar, flute/soprano sax, & percussion. Judith and her band have warmed up the stage as an opening act for Michael McDonald, Maria Muldaur, Pete Seeger, Paul Winter, Janet Hamill & Moving Star, Patti Smith, Levon Helm, Lucy Kaplansky, Bo Diddley, Tom Chapin, and many others. The band performs at all types of venues ranging from concert halls, to clubs, cafes, restaurants, art galleries, cultural events, wedding ceremonies, cocktail hour, and special benefits. Music that has been described as world-pop-fusion with a jazzy edge.

Sarah Armour
Master of Ceremonies

Born and raised in the Hudson Valley, Sarah has been lucky enough to be part of the Clearwater community since before she was born. She grew up volunteering at the festival, singing with Clearwater's Power of Song Program, and working on the Sloop in a number of capacities, including as a volunteer, educator, and first mate. Sarah has spent the last ten years working in environmental education, sail training, and experiential learning and she credits Clearwater with sending her along that path. Sarah works at Mystic Seaport Museum as the Captain of the classic Schooner Brilliant, running one of the oldest Youth Sail Training programs in the country. Sarah has a degree in Earth Systems Science from Cornell University where she focused on applied ecology, sustainable agriculture, and environmental education.