Hinkley water tainted by chromium 6 spreading

[Kadie]

Hinkley water tainted by chromium 6 spreading

Peter Fimrite, Chronicle Staff Writer

Monday, November 8, 2010


The creeping plume of chemically laced drinking water that plagued the Mojave Desert town of Hinkley and led to a major motion picture about the scandal has continued to spread despite a long-standing order for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to clean up the mess.

Higher than normal levels of cancer-causing hexavalent chromium, or chromium 6, have been detected over the past year in groundwater more than a half-mile beyond the previous boundary of contamination in the San Bernardino County farming community, water quality regulators revealed last week.

The toxic spillage at a PG&E facility southeast of Hinkley was first exposed by Erin Brockovich, a paralegal at a Southern California firm whose court battle on behalf of sickened residents against the giant utility was recounted in a 2000 movie starring Julia Roberts.

Representatives of PG&E said the levels of chromium 6 in the new location were never above California's safe drinking water standard and have recently been reduced to natural background levels. Still, many farmers and ranchers in the area are angry that the tainted water remains a threat two decades after PG&E stopped discharging the chemical.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/08/MNI11G1P93.DTL#ixzz14hoz8JSg

[Zoeisright]

1. PG&E lies. That's a fact.

And the poison we spew tends to stick around. For a LONG time.

[Kadie]

2. Yep.

Something we thought was taken care of long ago. Still not fixed,(maybe it can't be fixed) still spreading. Just not in the headlines anymore.