State senators watched the rough edit of a UNC-TV documentary that linked the aluminum company Alcoa with the poisoning of its former workers, its neighbors and the environment as it sought to profit from hydroelectric production on the Yadkin River.
UNC-TV gave the Senate committee unedited footage of 200 hours of tape in response to subpoenas. The committee action raised questions about the government requesting information from a newsgathering organization that is also part of a state agency. Free press advocates decried the subpoenas.
The documentary's narrator, Eszter Vajda of UNC-TV, drew connections between the Alcoa operation in Stanly County with the company's plants around the world. North Carolina is not the only place the company exhibited "a pattern of misbehavior," she said in the documentary's early minutes.
After the viewing, an Alcoa executive rebutted the documentary's claims, saying the company is proud of its environmental stewardship.
"I clearly heard the assertion of environmental health violations and coverup," said William O'Rourke, Alcoa's vice president of environment and sustainability. "It doesn't tell you the truth about our company or our environmental record."
The hourlong show featured interviews with Gov. Bev Perdue, family members of former Alcoa workers who died of cancer, an Alcoa manager and supporters of Alcoa.
The company is seeking to renew its federal license to produce hydroelectric power on the Yadkin River. Perdue opposes the relicensing and wants the state to take over the company's dams. She did not link the company to environmental or health problems in her interview with Vajda.
It is unclear how the documentary will affect the legislature's view of relicensing, but it opened the company to a slew of questions about its lawsuit settlements, how it treated workers and its willingness to pay for environmental tests.
Vajda said in a written statement that her managers told her that it did not have the resources to produce and air the documentary, so she worked on it for four months using her own equipment and on her own time.
