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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.
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.
Hexavalent chromium is a well-known pollutant because it was the central chemical in the class-action lawsuit depicted in the film “Erin Brockovich” over chromium pollution in water in Hinkley ...
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.
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.
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]
An example of this chemical causing adverse health issues is through a well-known hexavalent chromium (chromium 6) pollution event in Hinkley, California. Groundwater contamination in Hinkley was caused by water containing hexavalent chromium being dumped on the ground by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) from 1952 to 1966. PG&E used this ...
PG&E began delivering natural gas to San Francisco and northern California in 1930 through the longest pipeline in the world, connecting the Texas gas fields to northern California with compressor stations that included compressor stations with cooling towers every 300 miles (480 km), at Topock, Arizona, on the state line, and near the town of Hinkley, California.