essays

The dredging of the Hudson River: a missed opportunity for General Electric

General Electric, by working to first defeat, and then to delay and weaken the dredging of PCB’s from the Hudson River, has done a tremendous disservice to their stockholders. This project, based in General Electric’s backyard,  was a unique opportunity for GE to build an entirely new business division based on Environmental Remediation.

Such a division would have unlimited growth opportunities for at least a century, remediating not just properties in the United States, but throughout the world. We learned after the fall of the Berlin Wall the extent of the environmental degradation in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The rapid industrialization in India and China are creating another growth opportunity for a GE Environmental Remediation Division.

With foresight and careful planning, such a business unit could use it’s expertise to advise industrial concerns how to construct non-polluting facilities, creating yet more opportunities to boost GE’s profits.

The cleaning of the Hudson River was a extraordinary opportunity for a corporation to act socially responsible while simultaneously advancing their bottom line. It’s not too late for GE to change it’s approach to dredging. It’s in their own financial interest to do so.