PG&E hid the crisis and misled the community on the effects of that specific type of chromium and its possible connection to health problems in the town.Īt the time it was settled, the Hinkley case was the largest payout ever awarded for a direct action lawsuit.

The chemical seeped into the town’s groundwater. The utility company was found liable for dumping hexavalent chromium (aka chromium-6), a carcinogen used to suppress rust formation at the Hinkley gas compressor station, into an unlined pond in the ’50s and ’60s. Hinkley is still best known as the “Erin Brockovich town.” In 1996 a group of residents famously won a massive direct-action arbitration against Pacific Gas and Electric with the help of Brockovich, a savvy single mom and Los Angeles legal clerk. Hinkley-dwellers’ interest in these subjects is more based on survival than scientific curiosity they want to make sure no one can pull the wool over their eyes again. These workshops are a regular occurrence here and broach topics like isotope analysis, well testing techniques, and the best ways to navigate the political machinations between oversight organizations. Along the empty roads, thousands of pipe stubs - groundwater monitoring wells installed by Pacific Gas and Electric - began to look like air vents to some underground bunker where most everyone in town had retreated.ĭespite the oppressive weather, a small group of residents had gathered at the community center for a workshop on bioremediation, basically how to remove chemical contamination from their land and water. Residents here appreciate the dry, desert landscape - that’s why many moved to Hinkley in the first place - but on days like this everyone takes refuge indoors, curtains drawn against the view of empty lots where neighbors’ houses once stood. The surface of the 13-mile highway east to Barstow had become an asphalt skillet, and the town’s lone recreational feature, a children’s playscape, stood shining and unused like a monument to the lofty melting point of low-density polyethylene. It was a sweltering, 117-degree July day in Hinkley, California.

Erin brokovich p&g case settlement