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Satellite image of Hinkley, Barstow and Harper Lake, California. From 1952 to 1966, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) dumped about 370 million U.S. gallons (1.4 × 10 9 liters) of chromium-tainted wastewater into unlined wastewater spreading ponds around the town of Hinkley, California, located in the Mojave Desert about 120 miles (190 kilometers) north-northeast of Los Angeles.
About 600 Hinkley residents settled an initial case with Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) for $333 million. PG&E paid another $315 million to settle other lawsuits, according to the ...
At the center of the case was the Hinkley compressor station, built in 1952 as a part of a natural-gas pipeline connecting to the San Francisco Bay Area. Between 1952 and 1966, PG&E used hexavalent chromium in a cooling tower system to fight corrosion.
Hinkley is an unincorporated community in the Mojave Desert, in San Bernardino County, California, United States, 14 miles (23 km) northwest of Barstow, 59 miles (95 km) east of Mojave, 47 miles (76 km) north of Victorville and about a 120 mile (193 km) drive northeast of Los Angeles, just north of California State Route 58.
The Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is an American investor-owned utility (IOU). [2] The company is headquartered at Kaiser Center, in Oakland, California.PG&E provides natural gas and electricity to 5.2 million households in the northern two-thirds of California, from Bakersfield and northern Santa Barbara County, almost to the Oregon and Nevada state lines.
Erin Brockovich is a 2000 American biographical legal drama film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Susannah Grant. [3] The film is a dramatization of the true story of Erin Brockovich, portrayed by Julia Roberts, who initiated a legal case against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company over its culpability for the Hinkley groundwater contamination incident.
When a PG&E background study of chromium(VI) was conducted, average chromium(VI) levels in Hinkley were recorded as 1.19 ppb with a peak of 3.09 ppb. PG&E's Topock compressor station averaged 7.8 ppb and peaked at 31.8 ppb. The California MCL standard was still 50 ppb at the completion of this background study. [66]
[1] [2] With the help of his legal assistant Erin Brockovich, Masry built a case against the Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) of California in 1993. Their successful lawsuit was the subject of the Oscar -winning film, Erin Brockovich (2000), starring Julia Roberts as Brockovich and Albert Finney as Masry.