Family Faces Chromium Testing

At the time, Leon Park didn’t think much about the signs the size of index cards that said something about contaminated water being sprayed on alfalfa across from his home.

Park could even see the distant Pacific Gas & Electric Co. plant--the one he’d read about years back, that made all that poison chromium that got in the water. That was the story made into the movie, “Erin Brockovich,” that won Julia Roberts her Oscar.

Still, it didn’t dawn on the 33-year-old electrical technician that the story might not be over just yet, until health officials came and planted a monitoring box that looked like a tiny windmill on the lawn of the three-bedroom home he moved his wife and four children to about 19 months ago.

Now, Park is taking his family for medical tests, after finding out that the contaminant in the water is the same type of chromium that caused problems before, and enough of it had shown up in the little box to cause state authorities to shut down the irrigation system Friday.

“We can look out the door and see PG&E;, and we knew we were pretty close,” Park said Sunday. “We just assumed they had cleaned [the chromium] up and weren’t using it anymore.”

The Parks, including children ages 9 to 13, will have blood drawn Tuesday to check for hexavalent chromium, a carcinogenic that can alter DNA and mutate cells. It is considered more dangerous when airborne, as it was after the irrigation, than when it shows up in drinking water, as it did in the cases chronicled in the film.

PG&E; paid 650 residents $333 million to settle lawsuits over the chromium that leaked into ground water from the company’s disposal ponds from 1951 to 1982. The legal crusade on behalf of cancer-stricken Hinkley residents fought by Brockovich and attorney Ed Masry was the subject of the movie.

A PG&E; official has said the airborne chromium levels from the irrigation, which was approved by the state as a way to clean up the underground contamination, were within the “background” norm for Southern California air.

A state official and a UCLA toxicologist, however, said that the levels measured in Hinkley were “high” and that daily exposure could have exceeded levels defined by Proposition 65 as posing a significant cancer risk.

Theoretically, the waterborne hexavalent chromium in the irrigation water is supposed to combine with elements on the ground, and be converted into a less harmful form of the metallic element, according to the plan approved by the state eight years ago.

About 140 million gallons were sprayed each year since 1993, and no unsafe levels of hexavalent chromium were found in the alfalfa or cattle that ate it, according to the California Environmental Protection Agency.

The state’s newfound qualms about the irrigation have left the Park family bitter about their ignorance of the hazard across a fence from them.

When the family moved in, they had no idea the home was owned by PG&E;, which bought it from one of the plaintiffs in the Brockovich case, the Parks said.

A Utah native and Army recruit, Leon Park was posted to Ft. Irwin Military Reservation in 1986, and moved to the Barstow area. They moved to nearby Hinkley after Park left the Army in 1994 and continued working at the base as a civilian.

“We didn’t want to live in Barstow,” said JoEll Park, Leon’s wife. “We wanted to have chickens and ducks. We still have horses, cats, dogs.”

One of the couple’s cats, which spent a good deal of time outdoors, died of a neck tumor about seven months after the couple moved to the home, but that kind of death didn’t seem unusual, JoEll said.

Park didn’t learn of the troubling history of her house until she went into a video store four months ago and the owner, Roberta Walker, who is one of the original plaintiffs, broke the news after recognizing her address.

“She said she used to know the people who lived there because she lived across the street,” Park said.

Walker’s house was torn down, she said, but PG&E; kept the house that the Parks eventually rented. Park said the agency that rented the home never told him of the house’s history.

The hayfield signs, which were there when they moved in, say: “CAUTION, waste water in use. Avoid contact with water. Nonpotable water.”

“I didn’t think it would blow our way,” Leon Park said of the contamination. Everything seemed fine “as long as it didn’t get into our water table,” he said. Officials were monitoring their well water, and Park had seen their reports on it.

“It’s hard to make heads or tails of it,” he said.

The latest results, however, are enough for Park to make some decisions. “We’re probably going to move to another city,” he said. “As soon as we can find a place that’s suitable for us.”