(August 1) HINKLEY — Pacific Gas and Electric is giving Hinkley residents notice it will end its provision of free bottled water to households in the desert community later this year.
PG&E’s move is predicated on a July 18 letter written by Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board executive officer Patty Z. Kouyoumdjian. In that letter, to three Hinkley residents, Kouyoumdjian stated all of Hinkley’s drinking water wells now meet the new California standard of 10 parts per billion for chromium-6.
Pacific Gas & Electric first offered the bottled water program to residents in November 2010. In 2012 it began offering to whole house replacement water systems which cost anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 to install and maintain.
Those efforts came after considerable publicity about water contamination in Hinkley, which is located ten miles west-northwest of Barstow.
Chromium 6 is the common name of hexavalent chromium.
Hexavalent chromium contamination in Hinkley came about as a consequence of Pacific Gas and Electric’s operation of a compressor station there beginning in 1952. The compressor station was a facility located on a pipeline that ran between Texas and Canada and delivered in excess of three billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. The compressor station in Hinkley was one of eight such stations along the line in California. Natural gas available in the line was used to fuel compressors which repressurized the gas to push it through the pipeline. At Hinkley, the compressed gas was cooled with water circulating through two cooling towers. From 1952 until 1966, hexavalent chromium, was added to the cooling water to prevent corrosion to the cooling towers and the water circulation system. Wastewater from the cooling system was disposed of in unlined ponds at the Hinkley site. Beginning in 1964, after the danger of chromium 6 was recognized, the cooling water was treated to remove the chromium before it was disposed in the pools and a non-chromium-based additive was substituted into the cooling system in 1966. As of 1972 the cooling water was pumped into lined evaporation ponds.
These improvements to the system, however, did not undo the ecological havoc that had occurred up until 1972.
In 1988, the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, which oversees water quality issues in that portion of the desert, issued a cleanup and abatement order to PG&E to investigate a plume of chromium 6 in the water table. In 1991, the water board issued permits to treat the contaminated groundwater using land treatment units.
In 1993, attorney Ed Masry, with whom Erin Brockovich, a Hinkley resident, was working, filed a multi-plaintiff direct action suit against PG&E, alleging contamination of the town’s drinking water and untoward consequences of that pollution. In 1996, the case was settled for $333 million, the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit until that time. In 2000, the matter became an international cause célèbre, with the release of the blockbuster movie Erin Brockovich, which related a substantially accurate version of events in Hinkley. Contrary to widespread public assumptions, Pacific Gas & Electric’s payment of the $333 million did not redress the underlying problem. Masry and his law firm netted over $100 million in legal fees. Only a few of the plaintiffs received more than $100,000. No physical solution to the contamination problem was effectuated.
In 1997 and 2004, the water board reissued follow-up permits to PG&E for the use of land treatment units in the treatment of the contaminated groundwater around Hinkley. In 2006, with the Hinkley groundwater contamination issue fading from public consciousness, the water board gave permits for two subterranean remediation systems to clean up the source and central areas of the plume. In 2008, however, the issue was resurrected as one of regional and local concern when, amidst the water board’s provision of a permit for Pacific Gas & Electric to apply additional cleanup measures, it issued redrafted cleanup and abatement orders. Steadily over the last five years, the condition of the lingering contamination in Hinkley has grown into a larger and larger public issue as evidence of how the underground plume of chromium 6 continues to migrate through the water table into the area from which local wells draw water used for household purposes has emerged.
The best hydrological data available two years ago was that the plume was more than six miles long and two miles wide and gradually expanding.
Chromium is the 21st most abundant element in the earth’s crust and as such naturally occurs in rocks, soil, ground water and plants.
Under current guidelines, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency specifies 100 micrograms per liter as the maximum acceptable total chromium contaminant level acceptable in water to be consumed by humans. The current California state standard is half that at 50 micrograms per liter. But that standard applies to the most benign form of chromium, and not hexavalent chromium or chromium 6.
Trivalent chromium – chromium 3 – is the dominant form of chromium in nature, and is virtually insoluble in water and stable and immobile in soil. Hexavalent chromium – chromium six – is not abundant in nature, is soluble in water and is a potential carcinogen if inhaled.
Earlier this spring, the Department of Public Health submitted its final regulation decree to the state Office of Administrative Law which placed a cap on chromium-6 of 10 parts per billion. That standard has now been accepted by the state under the Administrative Procedures Act.
Project Navigator Ltd., an environmental engineering firm based in Brea which is the scientific adviser to the Hinkley community has been monitoring wells in the area. There have been contradictory reports about the level of chromium contamination in the area, with the distinction between chromium 3 and chromium 6 often being blurred.
More than two years ago, with no certain, final and comprehensive cure of the problem in sight, Pacific Gas & Electric in April 2012 began surveying homeowners with regard to their willingness to sell their property and move elsewhere. When roughly two-thirds of those surveyed indicated their readiness to depart the community, PG&E began making offers to individual property owners and undertook appraisals of their properties. As soon as mutually acceptable terms between PG&E and the individual homeowners were arrived at, purchases were made. In early 2013, homes in Hinkley were being sold to PG&E at a rate of two to four per week. Once the houses are empty, Pacific Gas & Electric has not spared time in having those homes razed, foreclosing any possibility that squatters or anyone else will be tempted to take up residence therein again.
In early 2012, Hinkley’s population stood at 1,900. Today it has dwindled to an estimated 1,100, as residents continue their exodus. Last year, the Barstow Unified School District moved to shutter Hinkley School at the end of the 2012-13 school year. The town is down to one market, a post office and a tavern.
In early 2012, Hinkley’s population stood at 1,900. Today it has dwindled to an estimated 1,000, as the residential exodus continues at a decelerated rate. Last year, the Barstow Unified School District moved to shutter Hinkley School at the end of the 2012-13 school year. The town is down to one market, a post office and a tavern.
Because of the drinking water standards set by the state, the Lahontan water board no longer has the authority to order PG&E to continue the water programs.