Hinkley Faces New Chromium Threat

Residents of the small desert town of Hinkley, where Erin Brockovich discovered that Pacific Gas & Electric Co. dumped contaminated waste water into the community’s wells, may be facing danger again from the same pollutant.

For the last eight years, the utility has been pumping millions of gallons of ground water tainted with a heavy metal and spraying it on crops that feed cows. State water quality officials approved the practice as a seemingly safe and efficient way to get rid of pollution while saving the utility millions of dollars that would have had to be spent to clean up the ground water.

However, recent tests show contamination once locked underground has been released into the air, creating a new menace to residents of Hinkley, which is near Barstow.

Although no one has reported any health problems so far, state officials on Friday issued orders shutting down the irrigation system using contaminated water. The order says chromium in the air exceeds safety thresholds and poses a “threatened nuisance condition.”

“With levels like this, the prudent thing to do is to stop it until it can be fully analyzed,” said William L. Rukeyser, spokesman for Cal-EPA.

People living in the Mojave Desert town were at the center of a protracted and emotionally wrenching fight over toxic pollution that spawned the blockbuster motion picture and an Oscar for actress Julia Roberts.

PG&E; paid 650 residents $333 million to settle lawsuits alleging injuries from chromium-tainted waste water that leaked from the utility’s disposal ponds between 1951 and 1982. Chromium was used at compressor plants the company operates in the desert.

In a series of tests conducted in the spring by the state Air Resources Board, investigators discovered that wind gusts blew hexavalent chromium over rural lands and into at least one home in the community.

JoEll Park, 32, her husband and four children live in that house on Summerset Road. She said she had no idea what was in the wind until officials installed pollution-sniffing filters in her yard a few weeks ago.

“We were kind of freaked,” said Park, who moved into the house a year ago. “We didn’t know what was happening until we got the call. Now the chromium is in the air and we are breathing it.”

PG&E; spokesman Jon Tremayne said the company has been providing air samples to the water quality board and the ground water cleanup is working as planned. Any air emissions that reached the community were no worse than anywhere else in California, he said. “We’re talking background levels for [hexavalent] chromium,” Tremayne said. “Any monitoring of air in California will produce these levels.”

Hexavalent chromium, a potent toxicant, is more hazardous when inhaled than when ingested in drinking water. Chromium is a known threat to human health. It alters DNA, mutates cells and is one of the few substances known to cause cancer in people. It is toxic even in small doses, especially for people with a family history of cancer. The metal has also been linked to reproductive injury.

Nevertheless, state water quality officials in 1993 approved a plan to allow PG&E; to use ground water contaminated with the substance to irrigate two alfalfa fields. Since then, roughly 140 million gallons of tainted water have been applied to the land each year, according to the California Environmental Protection Agency.

The theory was that the hexavalent form of chromium would quickly convert to a harmless form of the metal upon contact with plants and soil. The strategy is working to reduce ground water contamination, but officials say more tests need to be done to assess the full environmental impact.

“It doesn’t sound strange. We thought it was safe,” said Robert S. Dodds, assistant executive officer for the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board.

However, the levels of heavy metal found outside the fence line and in the yard at JoEll Park’s house exceed levels of concern, officials say.

“We found high levels of [hexavalent] chromium in the air. It’s very toxic and a serious carcinogen. Generally, even low levels are a concern,” said Michael Kenny, executive officer for the state Air Resources Board.

For example, investigators found toxic chromium at levels ranging from 0.2 to 0.4 nanograms per cubic meter at the house. Levels were significantly higher along a fence bordering the fields. In contrast, background concentrations in the Los Angeles Basin average 0.2 nanograms, air quality officials said.

At the levels found in Hinkley, people would inhale 4 nanograms of toxic chromium daily, said UCLA toxicologist John Froines, who chairs the state’s Science Review Panel that screens pollutants. He said that quantity is four times higher than the significant cancer risk level California established for the pollutant under Proposition 65.

Froines said the pollution is “at a level you would rather it wasn’t. This is high enough to worry about.”

In coming weeks, health officials plan to conduct more comprehensive testing to assess the full range of potential effects to human health and the environment, as well as alternatives for treating the contaminated ground water. Rukeyser said tests already conducted on alfalfa and cows did not show unsafe levels of chromium.

JoEll Park isn’t waiting for those results. She is keeping close watch on her children and neighbors. She’s calling doctors and wondering whether more surprises are on the way.

“The fields are right across the street from us,” she said. “It makes us want to leave.”

The discovery of toxic air emissions from PG&E; comes at a time of strained relations between residents and the state’s largest utility.

In last year’s film “Erin Brockovich,” a down-on-her-luck law clerk uncovered the pollution in Hinkley. Brockovich works for the law firm of Masry and Vititoe in Westlake Village.

Since the movie debuted, another 109 residents have joined in another lawsuit against PG&E;, alleging harm from chromium-tainted water used on crops and swimming pools. Company officials say those claims are unfounded, and differ from the claims that led to the previous settlement.

Whether the plaintiffs will collect any money seems uncertain because PG&E; says it is out of money, out of credit and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy due to California’s power crisis. PG&E; has lost more than $5 billion in the last year buying wholesale electricity at high prices.