Art Glowka

Glowka, Art
Art Glowka, a US Naval aviator, Captain for Eastern Airlines, commercial diver, outdoor writer, avid fisherman, and for over 50 years, a passionate, outspoken citizen scientist and environmental advocate for the Hudson River and Long Island Sound, died of complications from bladder cancer on March 25, 2013. Glowka, a long-time resident of Stamford, Connecticut, was 82. Born on February 5, 1931 in New York City to Martin and Anastaria Glowka, Art grew up on New York's Lower East Side, graduating from Scarsdale High School in 1948. In 1952 he graduated with a degree in forestry from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, in Syracuse. Between 1952 and 1957 he flew photo reconnaissance missions over Southern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa for the US Navy. He later ran an alluvial diamond and gold mining operation in the Tocantins River, in the Brazilian Amazon. Art married Marion Stadler of Scarsdale, New York in 1959. They divorced in 1994. Art started flying for Eastern Airlines in 1959 and retired as Captain in 1989. In April 1981 he belly-landed a troubled B-727 at JFK Airport where it skidded 3000 feet on a foamless runway. No one was injured. Art was an avid fisherman. In many articles for outdoor magazines and the New York Times he wrote about the bounty of the New York City, Westchester County and Connecticut waters. In early 1966, Robert H. Boyle, Art and six others, formed the Hudson River Fisherman's Association. They resurrected the Federal Refuse Act of 1899 and introduced the special, Hudson River style, roll-up-your-sleeves brand of aggressive environmentalism that was later emulated all over the nation, winning a series of legal victories that formed the basis for the modern US environmental moment. These victories continued as the HRFA evolved into Riverkeeper in 1986. Boyle described Art as having "a persistence and equanimity of soul that cannot be rivaled by a Buddhist monk…" He designed the HRFA's bag-a-polluter card with a simple reminder that the person reporting an incident leading to a polluter's conviction could collect up to $1250 as a reward under the law. Hundreds came back. Art noted, "It was bounty hunting at its best. Just using the law gave us power." At the close of the 1980s Art sat on the board of Riverkeeper and the Hudson River Foundation. He served between 1976-1989 as a member of the New York State Advisory Committee on Polychlorinated Biphenyls for the Upper Hudson River. In 1980 he won the Feinstone Environmental Award. Already in the early 1970s Glowka began turning his attention to Western Long Island Sound. He chaired the Oceanic Society's Long Island Sound Task force, and later became a founding director of its success or, Save the Sound. He lent his energy to those setting-up Sound keeper and Soundwaters. For over 15 years until his death he was Chairman of the Stamford Shellfish Commission. He was an advocate for experiencing the Sound first hand. In 1995, acknowledging his fierce determination to protect and preserve our local waters, Art was named Yachtsman of the Year by the Halloween Yacht Club, where Art berthed his boat and was revered by members. Avoracious reader of scientific papers and government reports, Art found their inconsistencies. Through research and simple fieldwork he re-created a 1906 study and showed that the East River had no impact on water quality in the Western Long Island Sound. "Long Island Sound water flows downhill into the East River," he pointed out to government officials. Originally an advocate for stricter controls of sewage flows into the Sound, he came to the startling conclusion that the Sound's biota was starving as the management measures deprived the system of nitrogen, that chemically clean water could not support the ecosystem and had shifted the phyto- and zoo plankton based food web, and that the US EPA was not giving equal weight to the biological integrity of the Western Long Island Sound as required by the Clean Water Act. What's more, he asserted the decision-making processes were effectively closed to stakeholders and largely unaccountable to the taxpayers. He called for a General Accounting Office investigation of the Long Island Sound Study. He envisioned a federal district court establishing a Special Master to bring all parties together to look at the Sound's problems from new angles to restore habitat for threatened and endangered species. The writer, Tom Andersen, pointed out that Art is "the kind of advocate who gives government officials, managers, bureaucrats a severe pain in the neck…as long ago as the 1960s, he began showing up at government meetings and in government offices to ask inconvenient questions and raise inconvenient issues." He was there to "represent the critters." Over the last 12 years, Art repeatedly asked four questions: (1) Are we saving or starving the Sound? (2) What has improved? (3) What is causing hypoxia? (4) Have the people making the decisions ever been out on Western Long Island Sound or even gone to the docks and talk to the fishermen, clammers, and lobstermen? There was almost always dead silence in the room. He is survived by two sons, Lyle and Paul." On Sunday May 5, Art's family and friends will gather on their boats near Westcott Cove in Stamford to memorialize him at 1130 am. The service can be monitored on VHF channel 72. A reception will follow at the Halloween Yacht Club. If you plan to attend, or for more information, please contact Bernie Weiss at 203-329-2503 or CaptainBernieWeiss@gmail.com.