GE Turns to NBC Subsidiary to Help Lobby Against Hudson River Cleanup -- by the Half Moon Press

April 2001 online edition

GE Turns to NBC Subsidiary to Help Lobby Against Hudson River Cleanup General Electric is turning to its NBC broadcasting subsidiary to help in a lobbying blitz aimed at avoiding cleaning the Hudson River of harmful PCB chemicals.

NBC president Robert C. Wright met privately with City Council members in New York in late March to persuade them to rescind a council bill that endorses the cleanup of the Hudson, The New York Times reported on April 6.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Dec. 6, 2000 recommended that GE be ordered to pay for the removal of PCB toxins it dumped in the Hudson River over a 30-year period.

The recommendation was based on the EPA's 10-year study of the contamination of PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls. The recommendation must undergo a comment period before it can become final. The comment period ends April 17.

GE meanwhile has launched an all-out effort to derail the cleanup, which could cost the company about $460 million.

"It struck me as very unusual," Councilman A. Gifford Miller, a cosponsor of the bill, told the Times. "As a City Council member, it is not often the chief executive officer of a major network comes to see you."

The New York City Council bill calls the cleanup project "long overdue" and says the effects of the pollution reach Manhattan.

Wright and four colleagues told council members that dredging the river bottom would be harmful because the process would stir up the contaminants that otherwise would remain buried, the Times reported.

The visit was just one aspect of the company's statewide public relations efforts, which include a half-hour commercial on four upstate television stations, billboards, and ads on radio, buses, in newspapers and a Web site.

GE said the lobbying by NBC is appropriate because of its presence in New York City.

"NBC is based in Manhattan; NBC is a constituent of New York City," Joan Gerhardt, a General Electric spokeswoman, told the Times. "So it is appropriate that he represented G.E. at this meeting."

Others disagreed.

"He is president of NBC, NBC is a major news outlet and very influential politically," U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, a dredging proponent, told the Times. "This is a crystal-clear conflict of interest and an outrageous breach of propriety on behalf of the General Electric Corporation and NBC."