Decades After "Victory" In PG&E Hexavalent Chromium Settlement, Hinkley CA Just Hanging On
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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. 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. The chemical seeped into the town’s groundwater. 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.
At the time it was settled, the Hinkley case was the largest payout ever awarded for a direct action lawsuit. Environmental advocates lauded the decision. And of course, the story became an Oscar-winning movie starring Julia Roberts. For many people, that’s where the town’s story ends. They probably imagine that Hinkley is now peppered with big houses paid for by the plaintiffs’ hefty award. In reality, all that remains in town today is a few clusters of homes, a scrapyard, a community center, a dairy, and the infamous PG&E station that connects to the vast natural gas pipeline system.
To call Hinkley a ghost town would be misleading; ghost towns have abandoned buildings. But PG&E bought most of the homes in Hinkley on contaminated land and bulldozed them to avoid squatters. Successive rounds of real estate buyouts have reduced the population to less than half of what it was in 2012. Even with ongoing cleanup efforts, hexavalent chromium haunts the town — potential new residents know Hinkley’s history, and those still there fear the ever-present threat of further deception or mismanagement in the remediation process.
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PG&E offered to buy every house within and on the edge of the plume. The offers varied, but many took the utility’s deal, opting to cut their losses and move. As it stands, PG&E currently owns about two-thirds of all the property in town. The buyouts further sapped Hinkley of its future vitality, adding insult to the injury of the chromium-6 contamination. “A lot of people sold in a panic,” said Barbara Ray, a Hinkley resident who commutes to Barstow for her job as a teacher. Some of Ray’s former neighbors tell her that they regret selling their homes; that they miss the small-town feel of Hinkley’s former community. Ray says PG&E offered her less than the cost of her mortgage for her home, so she declined — not that she entirely minds staying. “I love getting out of the city. My traffic sometimes is getting stuck behind a hay-wagon.”
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https://grist.org/article/the-true-story-of-the-town-behind-erin-brockovich/