Verizon had a radioactive situation on its hands.
Due to a series of mergers and acquisitions, the telecommunications giant owned land on Long Island that was once used to make nuclear fuel as part of Cold War atomic programs. Radioactive cleanup is costly, and the site has been the subject of numerous lawsuits from locals. So, every year since 2008, Verizon’s lobbyists have gone to Capitol Hill to convince the government to deal with the problem.
And Congress has obliged: putting language in a number of congressional reports directing the Army Corps of Engineers to prioritize cleaning up the old Sylvania site — thus relieving Verizon of some of the burden of fixing the environmental mess on Long Island.