"A lawsuit by residents alleging that PG&E had dumped cooling water from a natural gas compression plant south of town into unlined ponds. The waste, laden with toxic chromium-6, contaminated Hinkley’s wells, and the suit blamed the company for widespread cancer and autoimmune disease."(1) This case came to light by Erin Brockovich who was working with a small law firm. The people in this small town thought that their sicknesses were just from bad health choices, up until Brockovich realized that PG&E was actually causing these sicknesses and were fully aware of it. PG&E informed the residence that the waste they were releasing was healthy for you and would not harm you, they also were really interested in buying all of their land without them knowing about this toxic chemical. Erin Brockovich was able to fight for these residents and "the giant utility to pay $333 million in an out-of-court settlement to about 650 residents over the town's bad water."(2) The people finally got their justice and were able to pay for their health expenses and protect their families, or so they thought. "It turns out despite the settlement and the lawsuit, Hikley's water problem never got fixed. In fact, accordng to the Lahontan Water Board, the area of chromium-6 contamination has grown in recent year."(3) It is great that Erin was able to get PG&E to increase the settlement, because it was obviously a foolish deal especially when it has to be divided between so many people. I know that the people and PG&E were able to make an out of court agreement but from what was recently discovered I believe that the people of Hikley should definitely try and sue the company now, because it doesn't seem like they learned their lesson or even care that they are potential killing people. You would think that since the public knows that PG&E is aware of the problem that they would try to be more careful with what they do with their waste.
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