Power on the Hudson

The beauty of the Hudson River Valley was a legendary subject for artists during the nineteenth century. A hundred years later, those sentiments would be tested as never before. In the fall of 1962, Consolidated Edison of New York announced plans for the construction of a pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant at Storm King Mountain on the Hudson River. Over the next eighteen years, their struggle against environmentalists would culminate in the abandonment of the project. Robert D. Lifset offers an original case history of this monumental event in environmental history.