当时，一个奇怪的文件引起了她的注意： PG&E 购买了一处位于欣克利工厂隔壁

的房子。拥有该处房产的家庭的医疗记录也被记录在文件中，其中提到这家人出现了鼻子
出血，头疼等症状，甚至还患上了癌症——令人奇怪的是，文件显示，当地的电力公司愿
意为这家人支付医疗费用。 布罗克维奇嗅到了阴谋的气味。心存怀疑的她驱车赶到欣克
利，挨家挨户地上门调查。

从慢性鼻出血、溃疡、哮喘、乳房囊肿和癌症，几乎每个布罗克维奇见到的人都被病
痛困扰。随着调查的深入，她的发现也越来越多。布罗克维奇很快就发现公用事业公司的
代表愿意拿着支票与当地人周旋的原因——他们试图购买沉默。

真相浮出水面。PG&E 公司使用大型天然气压缩机来压缩天然气，而这些压缩机需要
使用冷却塔来冷却。冷却水中含有六价铬，以防止机器生锈。这些水被直接存储于池塘
中，严重污染了地下水。六价铬在当地的水平为 3.09ppb 至 1.19ppb，而加州的标准为
0.06ppb。

布罗克维奇随即发起了诉讼，那些据称因水污染导致的病例在促使 PG&E 公司赔付

的过程中起了关键作用。欣克利有很好的理由庆祝布罗克维奇的胜利。令人惊讶的是，并
不是所有健康受到严重损害的居民都得到了赔偿。而有些人并非主要的原告方，却获得了
赔偿，代价是放弃进一步申诉。此外，紧邻工厂居住的居民也获得了补偿。
 In the early 1950s Pacific Gas & Electric built their first two compressor stations in
Topock, Arizona and Hinkley at the southern end of what would become their trans-California
natural gas transmission system—a network of eight compressor stations linked by "40,000 miles
of distribution pipelines and over 6,000 miles of transportation pipelines" serving "4.2 million
customers from Bakersfield to the Oregon border."At both Topock and Hinkley compressor
stations hexavalent chromium in the form of an additive was used in rust-prevention in "the
cooling towers that prepared the gas for transportation through PG&E’s pipeline to northern and
central California.” These cooling waters were then disposed of "adjacent to the compressor
stations."[5] Although the dumping took place from 1952 to 1966 when Hinkley was "a remote
desert community united by a single school and a general store."[1] PG&E did not inform the
local water board of the contamination until December 7, 1987.

In 1993, Erin Brockovich, a legal clerk to lawyer Edward L. Masry, investigated the
apparent elevated cluster of illnesses in the community linked to hexavalent chromium.[7]

A protest sign outside the desert town of Hinkley

In 1996 "after arbitrators awarded $130.5 million in the first 39 cases, PG&E decided to
settle for $333 million,"—[3] the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S.
history.[8]

During negotiations about the lawsuit the presiding judges had told PG&E's lawyers that
the 1987 study by Chinese scientist—Jian Dong Zhang reporting a strong link between
chromium 6 pollution and cancer in humans,[9][10][11] "would be influential in their decision as
to whether chromium-6 was harmful to human health."[12] "[T]he Agency for Toxic Substances
and Disease Registry (ATSDR) had cited it as evidence that hexavalent chromium might be an
oral carcinogen; and (3) as a ChemRisk scientist has explained in a court deposition, the study is
"really the only epidemiology treatment that's out there in the literature of a groundwater
contamination plume and its potential cancer effects in a population."[12]

In 1997, an article was published in which Zhang allegedly retracted his 1987
research.[13] In reality, ChemRisk had purchased Zhang's original data and hired Deborah
Proctor from ToxStrategies[6] to distort the findings, rewrite the paper and publish it in April
1997 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM)—the official publication of
the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine—as a retraction of Zhang's
1987 paper. It was published under Zhang's name—who was then a retired Chinese government
health officer, in spite of his written objection—and a second Chinese scientist, Shu Kun Li.[13]
According to Peter Waldman, Zhang’s son was "outraged" at "the idea that his father would
willingly have invalidated his earlier award-winning work."[14][15] "In contrast to the earlier
article, the new one concluded that chromium wasn’t the likely culprit. The revised study —
which did not reveal the involvement of PG&E or its scientists — helped persuade California
health officials to delay new drinking water standards for chromium."[6]

In 2000, the lawsuit became an international cause célèbre, when Erin Brockovich, the
blockbuster movie was released.

In 2000 David R. Andrews, who was formerly a partner in the McCutcheon law firm
where he "started the environmental and natural resources practice, which grew to more than
sixty lawyers and became a nationwide and international practice. In 1985 he opened the
Washington, D.C. office for McCutchen and served as the managing partner until 1991."[16]
Andrews was also senior counsel to the United States Department of State, the United States
Department of Health and Human Services, and the United States Environmental Protection
Agency and was known as a "legal pioneer known for forging compromise in court rooms, board
rooms and diplomatic circles."[16] He was appointed as member of the PG&E Board of
Directors from 2000 until his death in 2013. Andrews had "expertise in environmental law and
co-founded MetaJure Inc., which focused on high-tech solutions for the legal industry." He was
on the board during the tenure of PG&E Corporation Chairman, CEO and President Tony
Earley.[17]

In response to public attention in March, 2001, the CalEPA asked the University of
California, Berkeley to name a panel of blue-ribbon experts to form the Chromate Toxicity
Review Committee. The OEHHA—which was established in 1991 with the creation of Cal/EPA
OEHHA—used to be located across from the University of California, Berkeley and had
maintained academic ties with this institution.[18] A public meeting was held on July 25, 2001 to
get "public input on the review of scientific questions regarding the potential of chromium 6+ to
cause cancer when ingested."[19] The panel was selected by Jerold A. Last with Dennis
Paustenbach as Vice President and included Mark Schrenker, Silvio De Flora and John Froines
as panelists.[20] Paustenbach, De Flora and Froines resigned from the committee and were
replaced.[21][22]

On August 31, 2001 the Chromate Toxicity Review Committee—which then included
Russell Flegal, Jerold Last, Ernest E. McConnell from ToxPath, Marc Schenker and Hanspeter
Witschi—submitted their report entitled "Scientific Review of Toxicological and Human Health
Issues Related to the Development of a Public Health Goal for Chromium(VI)."[21][23] The
blue-ribbon academic committee recommended that reports of chromium concentrations
especially in Southern California were alarmist and "spuriously high" and that further evaluation
should be handled by academics in laboratory settings not by regulators.[21]:29 Their report
cited both the 1987 Zhang article and the retracted 1997 version.[9][10][11][13]
 Citing the 2001 Chromate Toxicity Review Committee review,[21] in November 2001
the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment withdrew their 1999 Public Health Goal
for total chromium in drinking water at 2.5 parts per billion.[14][22]

In 2001, the firm of Engstron, Lipscomb and Lack had filed a follow-up lawsuit which is
known as Aguayo vs. PG&E on behalf of 900 people stemming from contamination with
chromium in both Hinkley and Kettleman, California.[22] In 2003, Senator Deborah Ortiz who
represented the Sacramento area and chaired the Senate Health and Human Services Committee,
along with Gary Praglin, a lawyer with firm of Engstron, Lipscomb and Lack in Los Angeles
called a Senate hearing into the "Possible Interference in the Scientific Review of Chromium VI
Toxicity."[22] At the hearing, Praglin testified about the way in which the flawed 2001 report by
the Chromate Toxicity Review Committee negatively impacted on their court case against
PG&E:[21]

After the blue-ribbon panel report came out, PG&E came into court, and they told the
judge that everything had changed. They were waiving the blue-ribbon report—the blue-ribbon
panel report—like a flag. They said to the judge, The State of California has spoken. It has said
that chromium VI does not cause cancer by ingestion, and they wanted to amend their
paperwork, their motions, their declarations, and move to dismiss our case. And they got that
permission to do that. They amended all their paperwork, and we were given permission to take
discovery—to take depositions, issue subpoenas—and we have obtained thousands of pages of
documents in connection with the blue-ribbon panel process.

Since the Hinkley groundwater contamination lawsuit, a group of California-based

scientists who are part of organizations such as the Desert Sierra Cancer Surveillance Program
(DSCSP) and ChemRisk have aggressively argued against the claim that chromium-VI is
genotoxic, to downplay the number of cancer cases and to challenge that there was a "cancer
cluster in the Hinkley area."[2][24][25][26][27]

According to the lawsuit, PG&E was also required to discontinue use of chromium-6 and
to clean up the contaminated groundwater.[28] By 2008 however, the plume of chromium was
spreading, capturing media attention by 2011.[28] In November 2010 PG&E began to offer to
purchase threatened homes and property in Hinkley and to provide bottled water.[28] By 2013,
the plume was "more than six miles long and two miles wide and gradually expanding."[8]
 In 2006, PG&E agreed to pay $295 million to settle cases involving another 1,100 people
statewide for hexavalent chromium-related claims.

In 2008 the EPA responded to a groundbreaking research by the National Institutes of

Health agency, the National Toxicology Program, published groundbreaking research on the
development of cancerous tumors on mice and rats that had consumed heavy doses of chromium
(VI),[29]

In July 2014 California became the first state to acknowledge that ingested chromium-6
is linked to cancer and as a result has established a maximum Chromium-6 contaminant level
(MCL) of 10 parts per billion (ppb).[30] [31] Hexavalent chromium is measured in μg/L
micrograms per liter. For drinking water the United States Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) does not have a Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for hexavalent chromium.
However, the EPA does have a MCL for all forms of chromium at 100 parts per billion.[32]

In early 2016, the New York Times described Hinkley as having been slowly turned into
a ghost town due to the contamination of the area.[33]
 PG&E already is using various techniques to clean up the contamination. But a new
cleanup and abatement order is expected in late September, based on an expansion of the plume
that was discovered in 2010.
The alternatives considered in the environmental report are: pumping contaminated
groundwater and treating it or using it to irrigate alfalfa and other livestock crops, which changes
the chemical to a less-toxic form as it moves through the soil; injecting ethanol or another food-
grade carbon substance into the groundwater to neutralize the hexavalent chromium; or use
subsurface water injection to create barriers of fresh water within the aquifer and deflect the
contamination in another direction.
PG&E has spent millions of dollars on cleanup and earlier this year agreed to a $3.6
million settlement with the state, company spokesman Jeff Smith said. Half of the settlement will
pay for a pipeline that will import water directly to Hinkley’s school.
“We will be there until it is entirely cleaned up and the impacts of our past actions are
cleaned up,” Smith said. “There’s nothing more important to us than it gets cleaned up and the
community of Hinkley is made whole.”
PG&E is delivering bottled water to some residents for drinking and cooking. At some
homes, the company is installing ion exchange and reverse osmosis treatment systems and, at
others, is drilling new domestic wells that tap deeper water that is not contaminated.

Alternatives ways:
1. Pumping contaminated groundwater and treating it or using it to irrigate alfalfa and other
livestock crops
2. Injecting ethanol or another food-grade carbon substance into the groundwater
3. Use subsurface water injection

PG&E
1. Delivering bottled water to some residents for drinking and cooking
2. Installing ion exchange and reverse osmosis treatment systems
3. Drilling new domestic wells