Scope and Content Note
The papers of William Hoppen (1918-2002) span the years 1831-1998 with the bulk of the material dating from 1965 to 1985. The collection documents Hoppen’s involvement in the environmental movement as a lawyer engaged in environmental litigation, an advisor on environmental legislation, and an activist who participated in and helped to coordinate citizen-based environmental groups. Most of Hoppen’s work on behalf of the environment took place in and focused on the state of New York. The collection includes correspondence, memoranda, agenda, lists, notes, and reports relating to initiatives and campaigns organized by Hoppen and various citizen groups; litigation files from cases argued by Hoppen and others; draft legislation; and subject file material including organizational mailings, state and federal hearings and reports, news clippings, and other printed matter relating to the environment and its defense. The papers are arranged in five series: Collection Inventory and Overview, Regional Lunch, Subject File, Alphabetical File, and an Oversize series. The series are described briefly below and more thoroughly in the series and subseries descriptions.
The Collection Inventory and Overview series represents Hoppen’s own efforts to organize and describe his collection. The series consists of a printed copy of an inventory written by Hoppen, as well as two memoranda by him that provide narrative overviews of the collection. Prior to donating his papers to the Library of Congress, Hoppen arranged them into twenty-two lettered “fields” from A to V. Hoppen’s inventory describes the contents of each field at the folder level and includes supplemental information and cross-references not duplicated in the finding aid prepared by Library staff. The current arrangement of the collection preserves Hoppen’s original organization, in part to facilitate the ability to go between Hoppen’s inventory and the finding aid. A searchable pdf copy of Hoppen’s inventory is appended to the finding aid. The two memoranda included in the series place Hoppen’s activities and his collection in the broader context of the environmental movement as it evolved after 1965. According to Hoppen, the movement’s evolution was characterized by an increased role of citizen groups and a broadening of its agenda beyond its historic focus on the conservation of natural resources. These two trends are reflected in the collection as a whole. While national environmental groups such as the National Audubon Society, Friends of the Earth - United States, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Sierra Club are represented in Hoppen’s files, the collection focuses to a greater extent on local and regional environmental groups in the New York region and beyond who worked on wide-ranging issues. Topics include air and water pollution, consumer protection, energy resource management, historic preservation, land-use planning, noise abatement, risks posed by nuclear power plants, protection of parks and scenic areas, population control, transportation planning, preservation of open spaces, solid-waste disposal, undergrounding of powerlines, and wilderness and wildlife protection.
The Regional Lunch (Fields A-B) series documents a program started by Hoppen to support community-based groups engaged in environmental issues. The program, which ran between 1967 and 1973, organized bimonthly lunches in New York City for leaders of citizen environmental groups to discuss mutual concerns and recent developments. In addition to in-person gatherings, Hoppen hoped the program would expand into a virtual network of community-based environmental organizations across the United States and in other countries. Included in the series are meeting agenda, correspondence, memoranda, and notes from the New York City lunches and Hoppen’s extensive national and international mailing lists, organized largely by name of individual, with addresses, organizational affiliations, and principal areas of interest noted. A large alphabetical file contains material supporting the Regional Lunch program as well as material documenting Hoppen’s other activities including his work with the Environmental Planning Lobby, his support for conservation bill-of-rights amendments to the New York State and United States constitutions, and his drafting of a universal declaration on the human environment presented at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1972.
The Subject File series contains nineteen of Hoppen’s lettered fields (Fields C-U) organized as seventeen subseries. Each subseries is focused on a citizen group or initiative, a legal case or cases, or an environmental topic. Included among the subseries relating to groups or initiatives are records from the Citizens Committee for the Hudson Valley (Field D) and its successful opposition to a proposed Hudson River Expressway in 1965. Hoppen’s leadership as chair of the group’s executive committee began his involvement in the environmental movement. A second subseries focuses on the Environmental Planning Lobby (Field O), a New York-based nonpartisan lobbying coalition. Included in the subseries are working files and draft legislation. Correspondence, memoranda, agenda, questionnaires, voting record summaries, and other records from the group are located in the Regional Lunch series. A third program featured in the Subject File is the Environment Information Services (Field C) project. The initiative was started by Hoppen and others in 1969 to develop a nationwide computer network of community-based groups involved in the environmental issues. Lastly, a subseries on National Priorities (Field N) concerns Hoppen’s encouragement of environmentalists to engage with activists in other fields such as civil rights, consumer protection, the Vietnam War, and women’s rights.
The Subject File also contains subseries or fields focused on many of Hoppen’s environmental litigation cases. Included are affidavits, briefs, complaints, correspondence, depositions, exhibits, interrogatories, memoranda, motions, notes, orders, and transcripts from cases he argued. Legal research files, including copies of nineteenth-century legal digests and legal codes, account for the collection’s overall broad date span. Much of Hoppen’s litigation, argued in federal court, focused on violations of requirements under the Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, and other statutes. Many of these cases involved transportation-related projects, including highway and rail, and their impact on air pollution, commuter interests, and the preservation of scenic resources. Included in the series is a lawsuit filed by Hoppen in 1974 against New York City's West Side Highway Project, also known as Westway. Also included in the Westway (Field E) subseries are records from another lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club against the project. Other litigation subseries include Clean Air Act Litigation (Field F), Harlem Valley Transportation Association Litigation (Field G), Capital Region Citizens Committee v. Volpe (Field H), and Bayswater Civic Association v. Karagheuzoff (Field I). The general Environmental Litigation (Fields P-R) subseries is a compilation of other cases argued by Hoppen and others, as well as topical files on relevant environmental and legal issues. Hoppen’s cases are more thoroughly described in the Subject File’s subseries descriptions.
Finally, some of the subseries in the Subject File focus on topics of interest to Hoppen. These include Transportation (Field J), Air Transportation (Field K), Rail Matters (Field L), Hudson Tolls (Field M), Air Pollution (Field S), Water (Field T), and Energy (Field U). The Subject File’s topical subseries generally include background material collected by Hoppen including newsletters, brochures, flyers, petitions, press releases, statements, and other mailings by citizen-based organizations, reports and hearings by environmental organizations and government agencies, and news clippings from the New York Times as well local and regional newspapers. In addition to this background material, the topical subseries often feature more unique material including correspondence, memoranda, notes, and drafts of statements, press releases, and legislation by Hoppen that document his collaboration with various groups. The quantity of the material in the topical files varies considerably from a few to many items.
The collection includes a large Alphabetical File (Field V) series in addition to the many smaller alphabetical files located in the Regional Lunch and Subject File series. These files share many of the same characteristics as the Subject File topical subseries described above. Although it is probable that the various alphabetical files were created to support particular projects or cases, there is considerable overlap in the topics and types of material they contain.