{"id":43603,"date":"2019-02-07T07:39:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T12:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43603"},"modified":"2019-02-07T07:39:30","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T12:39:30","slug":"still-toxic-after-all-these-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43603","title":{"rendered":"Still Toxic After All These Years"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Grist \/ EuToch \/ Getty Images \/ Alison Cassidy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still Toxic After All These\u00a0Years<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Nearly a quarter-century after winning millions from PG&E, the ‘Erin Brockovich’ town continues its fight for clean water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a sweltering, 117-degree July day in Hinkley, California. The surface of the 13-mile highway east to Barstow had become an asphalt skillet, and the town\u2019s lone recreational feature, a children\u2019s playscape, stood shining and unused like a monument to the lofty melting point of low-density polyethylene. Residents here appreciate the dry, desert landscape \u2014 that\u2019s why many moved to Hinkley in the first place \u2014 but on days like this everyone takes refuge indoors, curtains drawn against the view of empty lots where neighbors\u2019 houses once stood. Along the empty roads, thousands of pipe stubs \u2014 groundwater monitoring wells installed by Pacific Gas and Electric \u2014 began to look like air vents to some underground bunker where most everyone in town had retreated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the oppressive weather, a small group of residents had gathered at the community center for a workshop on bioremediation, basically how to remove chemical contamination from their land and water. These workshops are a regular occurrence here and broach topics like isotope analysis, well testing techniques, and the best ways to navigate the political machinations between oversight organizations. Hinkley-dwellers\u2019 interest in these subjects is more based on survival than scientific curiosity; they want to make sure no one can pull the wool over their eyes again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hinkley is still best known as the \u201cErin Brockovich town.\u201d In 1996 a group of residents famously won a massive direct-action arbitration against Pacific Gas and Electric with the help of Brockovich, a savvy single mom and Los Angeles legal clerk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grist \/ EuToch \/ Getty Images \/ Alison Cassidy Still Toxic After All These\u00a0Years Nearly a quarter-century after winning millions from PG&E, the ‘Erin Brockovich’ town continues its fight for clean water. It was a sweltering, 117-degree July day in Hinkley, California. The surface of the 13-mile highway east to Barstow had become an asphalt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[101,24334,15759,866],"class_list":["post-43603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-california","tag-erin-brockovich","tag-grist","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43604,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43603\/revisions\/43604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}