Hinkley groundwater contamination

From 1952 to 1966, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) dumped about 370 million gallons (1,400 million litres) of chromium-tainted wastewater into unlined wastewater spreading ponds around the town of Hinkley, California, located in the Mojave Desert about 120 miles north-northeast of Los Angeles. PG&E used chromium 6, or hexavalent chromium (a cheap and efficient rust suppressor), in its compressor station for natural-gas transmission pipelines. Hexavalent-chromium compounds are genotoxic carcinogens. In 1993, legal clerk Erin Brockovich began an investigation into the health impacts of the contamination. A class-action lawsuit about the contamination was settled in 1996 for $333 million (around$621 million in 2023). In 2008, PG&E settled the last of the cases involved with the Hinkley claims. Since then, the town's population has dwindled to the point that in 2016 The New York Times described Hinkley as having slowly become a ghost town. During the early 1950s, Pacific Gas & Electric built its first two compressor stations in Topock, Arizona, and Hinkley at the southern end of what became its trans-California natural-gas transmission system: a network of eight compressor stations linked with of distribution pipeline and of transport pipeline. From Bakersfield to the Oregon border, the network served 4.2 million customers. At the Topock and Hinkley compressor stations, a hexavalent chromium additive was used as a rust inhibitor in cooling towers. The water was then disposed adjacent to the compressor stations. Although the dumping took place from 1952 to 1966 (when Hinkley was a remote desert community with one school and a general store), PG&E did not inform the local water board about the contamination until December 7, 1987. Residents of Hinkley filed a class action against PG&E, Anderson, et al. v. Pacific Gas and Electric (Superior Ct. for County of San Bernardino, Barstow Division, file BCV 00300). LeRoy A. Simmons was the judge. In 1993, Erin Brockovich (a legal clerk for lawyer Edward L.