Maurice Hinchey
Maurice Dunlea Hinchey (born October 27, 1938) is a former U.S. Representative from New York. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He retired at the end of his term in January 2013 after twenty years in Congress. A New York City native who moved to the Hudson Valley where he attended high school and college, Hinchey had previously represented part of the area in the New York State Assembly since 1974. As chair of that body's Environmental Conservation Committee, he took the lead in bringing environmental issues to the fore, particularly when he held hearings on the problems created by toxic waste disposal in the Love Canal neighborhood of Niagara Falls. In his later years in Congress he vehemently opposed hydraulic fracturing to exploit the natural gas resources of the Marcellus Shale. Throughout his career he was considered a political progressive for his liberal stands on other issues.