Waterside Chats is a conversation series reflecting on the Hudson River Foundation’s 45-year legacy of turning science into action. This month, we sat down with Jim Lodge, our Director of Environmental Programs, whose more than two decades of work at the Foundation exemplify our commitment to long-term monitoring, listening, and learning. This is the first blog in the series. 

Welcome Jim, thanks for joining us! So you’ve been with Hudson River Foundation (HRF) for over 20 years, working alongside scientists, agencies, and communities across the watershed. What initially drew you to this work, and what has kept you engaged at the Foundation for so long?

It’s a great question. One I sometimes feel like I should think about more often…

I started my career at the Army Corps of Engineers after graduate school where I’d studied sediment delivery to the Hudson. At the Corps, I was working on dredge material planning related to contaminants and sediments, and at the time, the Foundation was part of a broader group trying to understand the sources of contamination in dredged sediments in the Hudson River and NY Harbor. This work eventually became the Contaminant Assessment Reduction Project (CARP)—a $40 million project that continued over multiple decades.

I came to the Foundation on a three-year contract to help coordinate CARP and more than 20 years later I’m still here. There are a lot of reasons for that, but a big part of it is the people—my colleagues at the Foundation and the communities we work with. From the beginning, my work at the Foundation has allowed me to collaborate with an ever-evolving mix of partners—scientists, regulators, local practitioners, and community stakeholders—all focused on solving complex, real-world problems.

What also really stood out to me then, which is still true today, is the Foundation’s ability to be agile and responsive. To listen carefully to partners, to help identify the most critical pinch points, and to be able to course correct when needed. That flexibility, combined with our strong commitment to collaboration, allows us to focus our work on the questions and priorities that can really make a tangible difference for the river and the people who rely on it.

That actually leads us into our next question—HRF often talks about turning science into action. In your experience, what does this look like in practice and why is it so important?

The Foundation has always focused not just on supporting strong science, but on how the application of that science can address the most critical policy and management questions facing the river. Not necessarily the topics that are trending in the news, but the ones that deepen our knowledge of the river’s underlying processes and the systems that govern them.

We know that research alone won’t improve the environment or protect key species. Impact happens when scientific insight is translated into action, and accomplishing that requires sustained engagement between scientists, policymakers, resource managers, and other decisionmakers around very specific issues. Some of our most impactful work has come out of navigating these situations—by bringing the right people to the table and facilitating conversations that enable them to see each other’s perspective. We often ask ourselves, “what do we know that is ready to be acted on, and how can the Foundation play a role in helping move that knowledge into practice.”

Can you share an example of program you’ve worked on that’s reflective of this approach?

One that comes to mind is the Hudson River Ecosystem Monitoring Program (HREMP). It builds on more than 40 years of environmental monitoring that was historically supported by utility companies drawing cooling water from the Hudson River. Now led by the Foundation, the HREMP collects data on overall river conditions, fish communities, and the organisms at the base of the food web. This information helps us track changes in the river and inform management and policy responses as those changes emerge.

A perfect segway, you were recently honored with the Outstanding Practitioner Award by the Hudson River Environmental Society for your leadership on the Hudson River Lower Food Web Monitoring Initiative under the HREMP—congratulations! Why is long-term environmental monitoring like this so critical?

Thank you!

Long-term environmental monitoring is critical to informing our understanding of what actions to take next. For example, past surveys under this initiative have documented the onset of the quagga and zebra mussels in the Hudson, which are invasive species, and have helped inform decisions around their respective management.

Just last year, the program detected the early stages of a cyanobacteria bloom, and since we already had effective monitoring systems in place, we were able to notice the phenomenon early, notify communities, and support our partners with follow-on funding to study the bloom’s potential impacts in more detail.

Looking back on your career at HRF, what lessons have you learned about building trust among partners, and how has that trust helped turn shared goals into tangible progress?

Well, there’s a couple of things.

Our history as an organization has shown us how to approach problem-solving through collaboration and with a long-term lens. The Foundation has a legacy of building and sustaining relationships with the scientists, managers, and communities around us who have deep knowledge of the challenges at hand as well as a desire to affect change. So, I think we’ve built trust with our partners over time, and we’ve proven that we’re genuinely looking for input to inform solutions. We’re really looking at where there is common ground, where there are gaps, and most importantly to understand what conclusions the science is pointing us toward.

We can see this through our restoration planning efforts as well. Back in the early 2000s when our partners began considering large-scale ecosystem restoration in the NY Harbor, we were part of the community who pushed the conversation to think more broadly about what comprehensive restoration planning could look like. In the decades since then, we’ve helped identify and frame the 12 Target Ecosystem Characteristics that make up the Comprehensive Restoration Plan (CRP) we use across the estuary today. Now, the NY-NJ Harbor & Estuary Program plays a critical role in keeping the CRP current and ensuring that our partners are aligned on a shared vision for a restored Harbor Estuary.

That’s a great example! To conclude, what is one thing about the Hudson River that still surprises or inspires you?

You know, it’s such a diverse river, not just in its ecology but in the communities that interact with it. It starts in the Adirondack Mountains as a small creek leaving Lake Tear of the Clouds and as it flows south it steadily grows larger. Past Albany it’s a large river and moves with the tides. By the time it reaches the Battery, it looks more like the ocean than it does a river.

Along the way, it also connects an incredible range of communities who experience the water differently depending on where they live and how they interact with it—whether they use it for swimming or kayaking, as a source of drinking water, or simply for the landscape outside their window. It means something different to everyone, and its value is tied to where you are and how you experience it.

We see this reflected in the Foundation as a whole too. Where our projects are along the river determines the questions we ask, the partners we work with, the communities we engage, and the actions we need to take to achieve our goals.

Thank you so much, Jim! This was a very insightful interview. We look forward to seeing how you and the Foundation continue to create lasting impacts for generations to come.