Rondout Riverport 2040

A Post Carbon Gateway to the Hudson Valley and the World

 A Comprehensive Plan for a Working Waterfront and the Transportation of Goods and People in a Carbon Constrained Future

Summary:

Rondout Riverport 2040 proposes a pragmatic, positive, and prosperous vision for the near future in which the communities of Kingston and Esopus are enriched by a transformed port, boasting a shoreline synergy of leading-edge maritime commerce and working waterfront technologies that profit and engage individuals, businesses and communities, allowing for an equitable transition beyond fossil fuels, as together we forge a vital and vibrant economic bond with the greater Hudson Valley Bioregion.

Over the next twenty years, Rondout Riverport 2040 offers the communities of Kingston and Esopus an extraordinary opportunity and vision for remaking and transforming the Rondout Creek and Hudson River Working Waterfront.

Rondout Riverport 2040 provides a trailblazing and sustainable development template for our community, harnessing and enhancing our region’s widely shared prosperity, even as we enter into an economically demanding carbon-constrained future.

The Riverport in 2040, as envisioned here, will offer far more capacity, while being significantly more compact in land area, more robust, and resilient than the current patchwork of diffuse land uses found on today’s waterfront. The core mission of tomorrow’s port is the post carbon maritime transport of goods and people up and down the Hudson River and beyond. The Riverport, as imagined here, is designed to attract shipping, distribution, commerce, hospitality, and craft businesses, creating a dynamic collaboration and nexus for optimized local and regional market productivity. The result: an economically, culturally and environmentally resilient post carbon working waterfront — a gateway to the Hudson Valley and world.

Think of Rondout Riverport 2040 as a signature project benefiting from the creative contributions of its many partner organizations, local governments, and institutions to address and transcend the near future threats of sea level rise; increasingly turbulent extreme weather events; and unexpected global, national and regional economic shocks. The port’s versatility will depend on the linking of its economic opportunities with environmental restoration and sustainable commerce. Embracing this multi-generational project will also be a source of inspiration for broader long-term action on climate change.

We can best accomplish these visionary waterfront goals via an integrated “placemaking” approach. Placemaking provides a method for answering critical questions: What are the best ways to mobilize and coordinate our many community assets? How do we effectively draw on public and private partnerships to creatively identify opportunities? How can we successfully coordinate our implementation efforts? And where do we find the resources needed to accomplish our vision for a transformed riverport?

We don’t have to wait until 2040 to start benefiting. Communities can begin now, as they participate in a vigorous planning process, while taking key steps for future proofing our shoreline against the harms threatened by a more politically, economically, and environmentally chaotic planet in a post-carbon future. The path to a bright, sustainable future starts with community engagement and data collection to build an actionable vision for the Rondout Riverport, a vision that incorporates a proud sense of community and place, local stewardship, and widely shared economic opportunity. The choice is ours.

 A Vision for Rondout Riverport Working Waterfront, circa 2040

Imagine: It is a hot, late autumn day along the Hudson in 2040. From the rooftop of a trading house in Kingston, a ship spotter sees the topmast of a large sloop. The sloop signals a waiting solar tug, the Augustin Mouchot, which tows the engineless sailing ship toward a berth in the newly completed Rondout Riverport Inner Harbor.  

The sloop, the Pete Seeger, is loaded with high-value cargo from abroad, transferred in New York Harbor from the oceangoing post carbon Eco-Clipper, Jorne Langelaan. The mixed freight consists of Caribbean fair-trade coffee and cocoa beans bound for the Hudson Valley’s roasters and chocolatiers, along with preserved tropical fruits and rum destined for local Kingston stores. The Seeger’s crew put a harbor furl on the hemp cloth sails, even as other crew members ready the on-board cargo gear. The sailors open hatches and set up the onboard cargo boom which will do most of the heavy lifting. The crew can also access the harbor’s floating cargo cranes for heavier or bulkier freight. 

These locally trained young seafarers are in good spirits, looking forward to spending some time ashore, and to a few drinks of locally made brew, cider, and spirits. Like any sailors, they are also hungry and ready for a good meal at a tavern — the local fare includes dishes harvested from the Hudson’s new artisan fishery and from oyster beds seeded in shallows created by former piers and abandoned roads, submerged downriver over the last 20 years due to climate change’s rising seas and increasing river levels. After dinner the sailors walk along the sea-life-encrusted seawall, built from repurposed concrete and stone from former waterfront byways, buildings, and piers inundated by the Hudson’s rising waters.

A longshore crew, warehouse workers, drovers and their electric-assist people-powered tricycles and wagons converge at the waterfront’s new storm-proofed floating dock — which rises and falls with surging tides. Cargo surveyors assist with the unloading of the coastal Schooner, Sam Merrett down from Maine with a load of lobsters. The square foremast tops’le Schooner Kevin Kerr Jones is unloading citrus from Savannah. Other stevedores are loading the solar electric Feeney shipyard built canal barge David Borton, bound for ports up the Hudson River with a final destination at Buffalo. Some smaller solar barges are loading for Port Jervis, then on to the newly opened Delaware and Hudson Canal. 

The (s)low tech Rondout Riverport is modern and efficient. The port is no longer dependent on prohibitively expensive fossil fuels, nor the notoriously unreliable overseas energy supply chain. Instead, Roundout makes the best use of old and new — tried and true 19^th century technology blended seamlessly with 21^st century solar and battery electric gear and vehicles. More people are at work today on the waterfront than at any time since the 1920s; there are more warehouses and trading houses, shipbuilding, repair facilities, and docking facilities than at any time in the Rondout’s nautical history.

Just behind the waterfront are coopers using sustainably harvested local oak,  sail and ropemakers utilizing New York hemp; forges and foundries use concentrated solar heat to form bronze fittings. Riggers are hard at work in ropewalks making running rigging and dock lines to equip the numerous commercial and recreational sailing ships and boats. Dry docks and shipyards look out on bikeways and walkways circumscribing the tidal flats, from which hundreds of locals and tourists observe the port activity, safe in the knowledge that food and goods continue to pour into a port that — thanks to good planning 20 years ago — is well adapted to keep pace with a changing climate and evolving post carbon economy. All of this could be, if only we take a can-do proactive approach toward tomorrow.

Reinvigorated Waterways

The Foundation of a Resilience Strategy

Contrary to the techno-paradise that some expect, my belief is that our future will likely resemble our past, and that we may fall back on proven, low energy approaches to supporting human life that have been historically proven to work.  “Isn’t that pessimistic?” asked the interviewer. I replied that I don’t think so. It is in my view even more pessimistic to imagine a world continuing on the current path, becoming a place in which there is no place for human labor or creativity, where rather than doing things with our backs and hands and minds, we must instead wait passively for conveniences and solutions to be marketed to us. That, to me, is the most depressing future imaginable. — Erik Andrus Founder the Vermont Sail Freight Project

Not so long ago, in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the Hudson River bustled with commerce and lay at the heart of a thriving network of marine highways linking the large cities and smallest communities to a web of regularly scheduled transportation routes — waterways stretching from the Atlantic west to the Great Lakes. Boats of all sizes served local cargo and passenger needs: schooners, sloops, barges, and steamboats connected river town inhabitants. Farmers, merchants, and oystermen relied on this vibrant and diverse fleet to deliver goods to market and to bring back supplies. The Hudson River — and the ships and boats sailing her — were vital and integral to those who worked, lived and thrived along our inland waters, putting places like Kingston and Esopus on the map. Historically, thousands of vessels plied these marine highways, sailing up and down the Hudson Valley, delivering fresh local farm produce ranging from apples to applejack, fish and shellfish, and carrying passengers to ports along the way

The Kingston and Esopus’ Rondout Creek and Hudson River Working Waterfront has long been a key contributor to our region’s financial wellbeing — though it could be so much more. Now, as we enter a carbon constrained future our Riverport is poised for rebirth, to again become a key regional hub for the transport of goods and people. As we move into a world facing increasingly tough political, economic, and environmental challenges, we must ask ourselves: How shall we, living beside the Hudson River, meet the looming threats of climate change, rising sea level, aging infrastructure, changes to global shipping patterns, threats to food security, upheavals in energy production and distribution, and the risks all these disruptions could bring? As in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the answer to those questions, and the solutions to our problems lie only as far away as the lapping waters of our home river.

This proposal, Rondout Riverport 2040; A Comprehensive Waterfront Plan for a Working Waterfront and Transportation of Goods and People, offers a pragmatic look forward to what — with proper preparation, cooperation and investment — could result in a revitalized and highly profitable Rondout Riverport at mid-century. This plan provides a practical salient vision of resilient shorelines and a working waterfront, redesigned to protect our community from sea level rise and storm surges, built to accommodate a wide spectrum of business, cultural and social uses that will benefit our communities and the Hudson Valley Bioregion. This, to put it simply, is a waterfront proposal that “floats all boats,” promising equity and prosperity for our citizens, large and small industries, investors, entrepreneurs, craftspeople, environmentalists, boatmen and women, dreamers and doers.

But here is a warning: An optimistic future depends on our will to make it so. If we pursue politics and policy as usual, we could face a grim tomorrow as our region is hobbled by climate change: Abandoned, flooded, moldering shoreside buildings and piers; low-lying and failing sewage treatment plants and electric utilities; eco-refugees crowding our upstate communities seeking limited food and shelter; and a polluted, dead estuary as oil and chemical plants are inundated. Despite sincere efforts at incremental change and adaptation planning, without visionary action right now, our region could face a dire tomorrow marked by rising water and plummeting economic fortunes. The choice remains ours.

The reality of escalating climate change makes clear that we must redesign our economies if we are to maintain quality of life in a carbon constrained future. A major opportunity offers itself: to take advantage of our wealth in waterways and return to our bioregion’s nautical roots and pioneer a new industry grounded in tried and true technology that once drove our economy: low/no carbon shipping and post carbon transportation businesses and organizations.

In the New York City metro area today, 80% of freight transport is carried by truck, a mode of transportation that is congesting our highways, increasing air pollution, and entirely dependent on fossil fuels. In a carbon constrained future, sustainable water transport (an innovative mix of sailing vessels, hybrid/fossil fuel free electric ships, and people/electric powered transport) will almost certainly be a necessity. As the climate crisis deepens, water-based transportation routes can link communities and promote resilience throughout the Hudson Valley — doing so without congestion, without pollution, while being energy efficient, non-dependent on increasingly expensive fossil fuels, and very profitable. 

Water-based transportation — once ubiquitous on the Hudson — is just about the only form of transportation, other than the bicycle, that requires little or no roadway maintenance. Navigation channels are less costly than roads to keep up; they do not require a large industrial base, and are far less energy-intensive than alternatives.

And you needn’t look far for proof: The 363-mile-long Erie Canal system, linking the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes, has been continuously operational since 1825. The cost of keeping it running is tiny compared to that of equivalent highway mileage. The Hudson and its linked waterways comprise the greatest set of transportation assets in the world — assets greatly underutilized today. Those water blue highways will see their status grow in a post carbon world, and communities along them will prosper as a result. Kingson and Esopus are two such communities. The Rondout Riverport is strategically located to be part of this great renaissance: located just ninety miles from one of the greatest ice-free harbors on earth; and sixty miles from the entrance to the Erie Canal. 

But to make this opportunity a reality, Riverport infrastructure must be created to increase capacity, while being nimble enough to respond to rising sea and river levels and worsening storm surges, as well as shifting economic tides. The port will also need to be made accessible to smaller, more numerous vessels on a protected and restored working waterfront. To thrive as a maritime and commercial center in a carbon constrained era, Rondout Riverport’s infrastructure must include:

• Charging stations for electric and electric hybrid vessels, flood-proof storage and production facilities for biofuels like methane (produced by sewage treatment plants), biodiesel (from restaurants’ used fryer fat), and hydrogen (created from seawater while sailing vessels are underway);
• A flood proofed waterfront and flood proofed warehouses and trading houses;^[1]
• Local ship and boat building and repair facilities to support our local commercial fleet;
• More traditional break bulk cranes for transfer of palletized, and bagged cargo;
• Across-docking facilities for transfer of goods from ship-to-ship and from ship to first and-last-mile providers (i.e. small sailing, rowing, hybrid vessels as well as people/electric powered commercial trikes and wagons);
• Access to innovative training facilities to provide a labor force: the new traders, river rovers, seafarers and port workers. This labor force will need training based on models for “preserving the tools and skills of the past to serve the future.”

Rondout Riverport will not stand alone, but will be integrated into the greater Hudson Valley Bioregion, along with the wider Northeast and U.S. transportation and distribution system, with which it will engage collectively and creatively to unleash an extraordinary, historic transition to a future beyond fossil fuels; a future that is vibrant, abundant, resilient, and ultimately preferable, more equitable, and more economically viable than the current model.

Rondout Riverport 2040 will serve as an empowering example to our bioregion and our country — demonstrating the viability of ethical livelihoods and teaching beneficial sustainable technologies that do minimal socio-environmental harm; methodologies that foster self-reliance and promote Slow Tech hands-on work practices.

The result: entrepreneurs, professionals, technicians, craftspeople, academics and students from across our bioregion, and across the United States, will be drawn to our state-of-the-art waterfront — gathering here to learn from each other. Our waterfront will be like no other in our region, or maybe in the nation: Becoming a living laboratory, cultivating not only practical and sustainable energy, commerce and transportation solutions, but generating a flow of fresh, pathfinding ideas. 

To bring these advanced infrastructure changes about — working with partners throughout the region — we will need to establish:

• A new binding agreement with the region’s farmers and farm advocacy organizations in our “foodshed” that offers subsidized support of infrastructure including, but not limited to:
  • Full employment in year-round growing season zero carbon greenhouses;
  • First and last mile transportation of agricultural products to processors and the waterfront (using existing and new rail-trails as bike/trike corridors);
  • Solar powered cold storage at critical locations;
  • Year-round indoor farm markets.
• An inter-port agreement with small and mid-sized ports along the Hudson River, the Erie, and Champlain Canals, and New York Harbor:
  • This agreement would include the sharing of information on resilience and “future proofing” of all waterfronts;
  • Establish a Sustainable Working Waterfront Toolkit — making available the historical and current uses and economics of New York’s waterfronts as a resource. The toolkit must include legal, policy, and financing tools that river ports and waterfront communities can tap into to preserve and enhance local and regional port facilities.
• Small ship access to flood proofed regional produce and fish markets:
  • The Hunts Point Market and Fish Market must be made accessible to small ships, delivering farm goods from upstate and returning with seafood from the Market;
• A new agreement with transport unions that allows ships to load and unload with their own equipment. Local industry will need to work in close conjunction with the unions to hire and train more people for post carbon longshore work;
• A partnership with the region’s Maritime Academies, the Hudson River Maritime Museum’s Wooden Boat School, and the Harbor School to train mariners, and to teach the logistics careers required to serve the new post carbon working waterfront; with the ultimate goal being the creation of an education center in the mid-Hudson Valley where professional practitioners and apprentices can participate in practical workshops to relearn maritime and other heritage skills and old-new technology to serve present and future needs; 
• An endowment for the preservation and utilization of traditional maritime skills and tools, the establishment of a traditional knowledge database/Wiki; library; and pre/post carbon tool, technology and machinery collection. This innovative interactive educational resource serves to preserve, restore, and promote the re-use of traditional skills, integrating those skills and methods with modern know-how and appropriate post carbon technologies;
• Create maritime mixed-use zones where public parks, walkways and bikeways are built in flood zones and are adjacent to and part of the working waterfront — acting as a source of recreation and as a vital part of flood control;
• Establish a strong working relationship with NOAA’s National Sea Grant Program for working waterfronts;
• Advocate for a reduced, less intrusive regulatory role for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Instead, encourage Corps funding be channeled into partnerships with other agencies, local non-profit organizations, and an engaged public in order to develop, and redevelop climate change-resistant and resilient Hudson River Ports, and to create living shorelines, restored wetlands, and estuarine habitats.

Through this diversity and synergy of uses, Rondout Riverport’s working waterfront will also:

• Create jobs in sailing, logistics, shipbuilding, harbor maintenance, craft, food production and more;
• Revitalize the waterfront community via economic development combined with better public access and recreation;
• Improve regional food production and distribution, linking producers to markets in the Hudson Valley and beyond.
• Design and build a maritime commerce micro-hub for, aggregation, warehousing, co- packing, and marketing. 

Rondout Riverport will be the homeport for future-proof sailing, alternative fuel, and solar electric ships. It will provide training in maritime skills, shipbuilding, and longshore trades, while also educating crews in “earth care, people care, and fair share” principles. These future-proof ships and their locally trained crews will carry people, goods, and knowledge to and from towns along the Hudson and on the canals. 

As Rondout Riverport becomes the working waterfront of tomorrow, the constraints and advantages of smaller and (s)lower tech modes of transport must be considered in every aspect of the port’s design.  Historic and modern technologies must meld seamlessly to offer approaches that are more self-sufficient and sustainable. Just one example: ships of all sorts, meeting a variety of needs, will have to be built (and rebuilt) locally, from locally sourced or recycled materials, and be crewed by locally trained seafarers, in order to adjust to declines in these resources globally, declines brought on by a combined climate and economic crisis and social upheaval abroad. These new vessels will likely be different than the ones we build today; smaller, more versatile, adaptable, energy-smart, and affordable.

As fossil fuels become more expensive or less available, replaced by alternative sources, and are restricted by climate change policy — port infrastructure will need to be part of a carbon neutral trading network for “short sea shipping” that links us to the region and the world, serving the Hudson Valley, the New York/New Jersey Harbor, Coastal waterways, and transfer points for goods from overseas. 

Moreover, the Roundout Riverport will be well positioned to become a laboratory for maritime innovation, as public agencies and private companies accelerate their investigations of the potential economic and environmental benefits of transferring more cargo from roadways to blueways.

Imagine the Future, Realize the Vision

Life at the water’s edge is rapidly changing. The impacts of new technology, patterns of urban development, and globalization are redefining global logistics, and while some waterfront cities will thrive as ports and grow under these new conditions, others will need to evolve in order to survive and succeed…. 

The Rondout Creek today, lapping at the shores of Kingston, and of the Sleightsburg and Connelly hamlets in the town of Esopus, is in the flux of significant change. The waterfront as it is, represents an amalgam of positives and negatives. At its best, it boasts commercial shipyards, marinas, marine services businesses; institutions including the Hudson River Maritime Museum (and its Wooden Boat School and Shipyard); along with wetlands, open space, promenades, magnificent scenery and recreational possibilities. But at its worst, it is marred by brownfields, combined sewer overflows, and a variety of non-waterfront dependent uses that make poor use of water accessibility, marine transportation and port possibilities.

Most unfortunate of all: existing development plans lack a sweeping vision and often fail to take a future into account dominated by climate impacts, including severe storm surges, along with a steady sea and river level rise that will soon inundate portions of the currently existing Roundout and Hudson shoreline. Plans that fail to take climate change into account will drown in insolvency.

Over the past few years, a variety of plans and proposals have been put forward, each with very good elements, but also with gaps and flaws:

• The City of Kingston and town Esopus are working with stakeholders and partners on The Rondout Waterfront to improve the resiliency and sustainability of the shoreline, implement an economic development strategy, and cultivate better access to the river via waterfront parks and open space for people on foot, on bicycle, and launching boats. 
• Kingston’s Weaving the Waterfront planning process has many elements including: the Waterfront Resiliency Project, Rondout Riverport Shoreline Stabilization and Public Access Project, Kingston Point Park Improvements Project, Kingston Point Climate Adaptive Design, Kingston Point Rail Trail Phase 2, and trail and public access improvements.
• The Town of Esopus, is also working on a comprehensive plan that contains waterfront goals for the Wallkill, Hudson, and Rondout Creek Waterfront access and usage. These plans include development policies to restore, revitalize, and redevelop deteriorated and underutilized waterfront areas for commercial, industrial, cultural, recreational, and other uses. 
• Significant work has also been done to address storms and sea level rise: Preparing Hudson River Waterfronts for an Era of Rapid Sea Level Rise, The City of Kingston Grant-Funded Waterfront Projects, Scenic Hudson’s report on Sea Level Rise, and Hudson River Sea Level Rise City of Kingston. New York is also starting to pay attention to the climate issue through The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA).

However, importantly, very few if any of these proposals are in the implementation phase. And little of the available climate and sea level change studies and data are included in the port plans as presently formulated.

Rondout Riverport 2040 is unique in that it takes likely forecasts of the near future fully into account; it is a proposal that offers a hard, sober look at the realities of our climate change, alternative energy, and global supply chain future.   

But for this plan to be realized, stakeholders, partners, and existing maritime institutions will need to buy-in now and participate actively in the planning and implementation process. Those institutions include, but are not limited to the Center for Post Carbon Logistics, the Schooner Apollonia, the Hudson River Maritime Museum’s solar electric passenger vessel Solaris, the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Sustainable Hudson Valley’s Regional Hudson Valley Climate Action Plan,  The Riverport Coalition, and the Beacon Sloop Club’s Woody Guthrie. This diverse partnership must also be inclusive of public and private landowners, as well as land conservation organizations, including but not limited to the Kingston Land Trust, Scenic Hudson, and the hundreds of Hudson Valley organizations and individuals working for a more resilient and sustainable future.

Threat Assessment:

A first step: the Rondout communities must start by objectively assessing near future threats and evaluating our greatest points of weakness — assessing local infrastructure, and economic, political, social, and environmental structures. Rondout Riverport communities will especially need to fortify against the economic and environmental storms to come by doing work to enrich our towns and neighborhoods today, reducing risk and enhancing resilience for the future, by:

• Implementing community flood-proofing and simultaneously introducing drought-resistant landscaping, in preparation for extreme weather patterns;
• institutionalizing green building practices;
• zoning against development in climate disaster-prone floodplains;
• installing redundant communication and storm-proof energy systems;
• establishing systems for community-wide food security
• creating “resiliency hubs”, equipped to deal with sudden health, environmental, or weather / climate disasters, and develop strategies for proactive risk minimization and management;
• using the tools of community “placemaking” to include the broadest possible participation in planning for, and developing, a working and recreational Rondout Waterfront and Port that will be operational and adaptable for the first half of the 21^st century and beyond.
• develop an education and training center for rapid proliferation of all these practices and trades in and beyond the Rondout Riverport

Placemaking — a pathway to the future:

Rondout Riverport 2040 will engender the Hudson Valley’s can-do spirit, harness our region’s inventiveness and our love of innovation, allowing our region and its people to not merely survive in the Post Carbon era, but thrive. And why not? After all, our region gave the world the steamboat, the telegraph, the submarine, FM radio, the first interactive software systems vital to today’s computers, and even potato chips. We seem born to invent the future!

Roundout Riverport 2040, by cooperating fully with all partners, will incorporate the best elements of existing planning documents; undertake a thorough land use, flood plain, and sea level rise analysis; examine current trends in shipping, energy, food security and port management; assess the best climate change and economic forecasts; and create an adaptive re-use Waterfront plan that incorporates the best of 19^th, 20^th, and 21^st century technologies. 

But this process will do far more than construct a vision. It must ensure that this vision is aligned with community values and sensibilities. To achieve this goal, we will use a placemaking approach as the structure for addressing critical questions about how best to mobilize the many assets of the Rondout Riverport in a coordinated fashion to meet community needs and attract diverse resources.  

Placemaking is a holistic approach for considering the possibilities inherent in a locality by identifying a unifying purpose or theme — the essence of the place — and then identifying multiple strategies, at multiple scales, that relate to this theme, providing direction for achieving unified objectives and goals.

The foundation of placemaking is a focus on the many natural benefits of public space – in order to achieve the most comprehensive multiple uses, aesthetic benefits, connectivity, and social interaction. This process will generate key insights into how state, municipal, and county government agencies can best coordinate implementation efforts and find the resources to address problems and opportunities.

The placemaking approach will catalyze the integration of the many layers of conceptual planning already underway by various entities, aiding in the development of collaborative strategies for redeveloping the Port so that it serves multiple river uses and users.

The partners will work with, and gain consensus from, other Hudson Valley organizations to begin realizing the Rondout Riverport 2040 vision. A network of groups, including the Boatbuilders, Sustainable Hudson Valley Senior Fellows, Good Work Institute Fellows Network, C4PCL’s advisory board, plus staff and contractors, will provide intensive inputs and garner resources to translate the partners’ vision into robust planning during the rest of 2020 and 2021.

It is now past time to implement the many excellent ideas generated by our communities and their planners. It is time to bring the planning process forward into those communities. The path to a bright, sustainable future starts with research and engagement, and placemaking in Kingston and Espopus and on the Roundout Waterfront.

The source of our inspiration and empowerment will be our region’s shorefront and its waters, its hands, and minds. Here the best and brightest, urban and rural, “Slow” technologists, craftspeople, educators, planners, artists, schoolchildren, and seniors, can come together to remake our post-modern world. Here we’ll find new, efficient, green ways to produce energy; revolutionize agriculture to assure food security; reinvent transportation on land and water to move goods up and down our Hudson and to prosper in the challenging times ahead. Here we’ll help birth a new, inclusive regional economy that rewards all citizens, while celebrating democracy, cooperation, and public service.

Picture a Roundout Port in which every day, diverse participants — Transition and Permaculture practitioners, boat and ship builders, coopers, riggers, longshore workers, managers, carpenters, commercial fishermen, millwrights, engineers, potters, community development financial institutions, weavers, woodworkers, planners, architects, writers, historians, archivists, computer and IT experts, and people from wildly diverse vocations — will all merge and meld their talents to realize the vision of Rondout Riverport 2040.

In implementing the Rondout Riverport vision, we’ll move via hands-on experiences beyond spin and abstract buzzwords ­– past “environmental”, or “sustainable”, or “eco” this or that. Here, our work will focus on a single place and on a Just Transition away from fossil fuels. The times ahead will give new meaning to the word deckhand, as all join together to create the naturally viable means for living and being in community in the 21^st Century — as we prosper economically, emotionally, and spiritually, beyond the realm of coal and oil. 

The next step will be one of the most critical: to gather all our research and data, analyze it, and commit to honestly confronting challenges, while also boldly embracing opportunities and possibilities. We must move forward quickly and vigorously — climate change and economic change are moving ahead swiftly. We must inspire individuals, communities, local leaders, and City, County, and State officials to commit to the creation of a thriving, innovative Rondout Riverport and Working Waterfront, as a gateway to a vast system of sustainable blue waterways that together will enable a Post Carbon Future full of hope and opportunity.

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[1] A trading house an exporter, importer and also a trader that purchases and sells products for other businesses. Trading houses provide a service for businesses that want international trade experts to receive or deliver goods or services.