From W.N.Y.C. in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Having access to the media gives you power. Having access to power gives you power too.

General Electric has access to both. Currently, the company is putting its high-voltage public relations machine to work in a protracted battle with the Environmental Protection Agency.

GE is spending millions of dollars in upstate New York to persuade the locals that toxic waste in the Hudson River doesn't need to be cleaned up.

Brian Mann of North Country Public Radio reports.

Stand on the bank of the Hudson River, and you'd never know that this is America's largest superfund site.

On the far shore, wood ducks move in a line in the shade of budding trees.

But just under the surface lie more than a million pounds of polychlorinated biphenals, a toxic chemical poured into the

river by General Electric decades ago. Last fall, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed

a massive dredging operation to remove polluted sediment. The cleanup, one of the biggest in

U.S. history, would be paid for by GE.

Facing a price tag of half a billion dollars,

the company responded with an aggressive PR campaign aimed at killing the planet.

These wonderful moments

are one of the richest rivers on earth

could be interrupted.

For the next 20 years.

If the EPA orders the Hudson dredged.

That's right.

Removing millions and tons of sediment could take 20 meters, and there's no guarantee

dredging will work.

Ads and infomercial like this one have aired in heavy rotation on dozens of TV and radio stations.

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