ERIN BROCKOVICH ANDERSON v PACIFIC GAS ELECTRIC Author Carole D Bos J D ONLINE AT http www awesomestories com movies erin brockovich erin brockovich ch1 htm PREFACE Mr Masry s office has done an incredible job I don t know where he got this stuff ferreting out information for the past several months that will make your hair stand up on edge Walter Lack January 4 1994 Pacific Gas Electric PG E was in trouble Serious trouble Four decades after the world s largest utility started dumping 370 million gallons of cancer causing chemicals into unlined ponds in Hinkley California the company s actions had finally been uncovered Uncovered by Erin Brockovich a formerly unemployed single mother of three working in a California law firm who wanted to know what medical records had to do with a real estate file What she found out led to the biggest settlement on record for a civil class action lawsuit CHAPTER 2 DEATH AND DESTRUCTION IN THE MOJAVE Many people and domestic animals in the high desert town of Hinkley California were getting sick Some had died Since residents depended on the local groundwater supply for all their needs were the illnesses somehow related to PG E s Gas Compressor Station located nearby On December 7 1987 officials from the company advised the State of California they had detected levels of hexavalent chromium chrome 6 in a groundwater monitoring well north of the compressor station s waste water ponds The levels were ten times greater than the maximum amount allowed by law Known as a cancer causing chemical since the 1920s chrome 6 is especially dangerous to lungs Since many of the Hinkley residents were reporting respiratory problems a link to chrome 6 contamination seemed possible After PG E reported the pollution to the government company officials started a program to buy every piece of property in the community thought to be affected by the pollution That s what medical records had to do with real estate transactions It wasn t long before PG E had 75 of those houses and buildings destroyed The company reported it was merely responding to vandalism CHAPTER 3 MISLEADING STATEMENTS PG E distributed flyers discussing the company s use of chromium to local residents Nowhere in the flyer was there any mention of the type of chromium PG E had used In fact one could make a strong case that carefully selected words were deliberately misleading Chromium occurs in two forms The form that is present in groundwater can cause health effects in high doses The cleanup program however will result in chromium levels that meet the very conservative drinking water standards set by the EPA In addition the form of chromium that will be left on soils after irrigation is nontoxic In fact chromium in this form is a naturally occurring metal that is an essential ingredient in the human diet one that is often included in multiple vitamin mineral supplements Reading these words one could reasonably think PG E s hexavalent chromium was almost beneficial As the plaintiffs trial brief wryly commented the flyer might have invited a person to sprinkle some on your morning cereal Failure to properly identify the dangerous type of chromium it had dumped into the environment wasn t PG E s only omission The flyer made it sound like detection of contamination at the compressor station was a new development It wasn t PG E first knew about plant contamination by at least 1965 CHAPTER 4 22 YEARS LATE PG E records revealed people at the company were concerned about chrome 6 contamination of Hinkley s groundwater by at least the summer of 1965 Plaintiffs Trial Brief Investigating what PG E officials knew about the contamination and when they knew it Fox TV local channel 11 ran a series on May 23 24 and 26 1994 Here is part of the verbatim transcript contained in the court s file for the May 23rd report Fox Reporter What did PG E know and when did officials know it PG E Representative It wasn t discovered until 1987 when through a routine environmental survey which we do on all our sites such as this the Company discovered it Fox Reporter But this man Victor Moore worked at the Hinkley plant for more than 32 years and he says that a fellow worker found the contamination in 1965 across the street from the plant The Fox Reporter then relates additional investigation results Fox Reporter We wanted to talk to Moore s co worker but the man has died of cancer However Fox News has obtained PG E test data on that same well and it seems to back up Moore s claim It shows that in September 1965 PG E found levels up to 400 times the EPA s current safety standard and answers from a top PG E official under oath for the current lawsuit bolster that 1965 discovery date Trying to understand this apparent inconsistency the Fox Reporter pressed the issue Fox Reporter We asked the PG E official to explain that apparent 22 year contradiction He says PG E senior management wasn t told until 1987 In other words PG E officials in Hinkley knew about the extraordinary levels of chrome 6 contamination but senior management in San Francisco didn t The suggestion that senior management in San Francisco didn t know what was happening at Hinkley for 35 years is the biggest lie of all Plaintiffs 6 6 94 Trial Brief Based on the evidence high levels of chrome 6 contamination found in 1987 could not have been a surprise to the company notwithstanding whether senior management knew People and animals who lived in the area had been breathing ingesting and absorbing dangerous toxins into their bodies for decades Why did PG E use so much chrome 6 at the Hinkley Compressor Station And how did that chemical travel from plant facilities into the bodies of people who lived nearby CHAPTER 5 THE COMPRESSOR STATION Hinkley is located in the Mojave Desert near the town of Barstow California It is not far off the famous Route 66 about 150 miles from Las Vegas Surrounded by beautiful scenery Hinkley is an important point on PG E s natural gas pipeline as it travels from Texas to California The purpose of the Hinkley Compressor Station is best described by PG E in the flyer it gave to neighbors of the plant The Hinkley Compressor Station was built in 1952 as part of the pipeline system that brings southwest natural gas to PG E s service area These PG E gas lines serve Barstow and the surrounding area by delivering gas to Southwest Gas Company The Station compresses one third of the natural gas required by PG E s customers in northern and central
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