Richard Hudson

Richard L. Ottinger, a New York Democrat who represented largely Republican Westchester County districts in Congress for 16 years and who championed the environment by fighting to clean up the Hudson River, keep gas guzzlers off the roads and stop nuclear plants from being built, died on Monday at his home in Mamaroneck, N.Y. He was 97.

His son Larry confirmed the death.

Descended from a wealthy Republican family — one of his uncles narrowly lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1928 New York governor’s race — Mr. Ottinger switched to the Democratic Party while a young lawyer in the 1950s. He served six years in the House of Representatives beginning in 1965 and 10 more years starting in 1975. During the four-year hiatus between those stints, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate.

Besides sponsoring legislation to reduce pollutants in the Hudson and development along its shoreline, Mr. Ottinger joined environmental groups in bringing lawsuits on those matters. One suit, in 1983, forced the Reagan administration to unlock funds to begin removing cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from the river.

Mr. Ottinger also opposed plans for a 10-mile expressway that would have run north from Tarrytown along the eastern bank of the Hudson, and for a Consolidated Edison hydroelectric power plant that would have been embedded in Storm King Mountain on the western side.