View the film "Erin Brockavich" which can be found streaming online through online sources such as

The essay should be approximately 1 page in length (no longer then one page), with 1-inch margins on
the top, bottom, left, and right of the page. Please use 12-point font and double-space. If you use any
sources in preparing this essay, you should make sure to cite them appropriately. Good luck!
As was common practice in the 1950s and 1960s, Pacific Gas & Electricity (PG&E)
Corporation added a corrosion inhibitor called chromium-6 to the water used to cool its natural
gas compressor stations in remote areas. Once used, the coolant was stored in unlined ponds at
the stations from where it inevitably seeped into the ground. By the 1980s a disproportionate
number of the people who lived or had lived in the small town of Hinkley in the Mojave Desert,
near one of these compressor stations, were suffering a wide range of diseases, including various
forms of cancer, which could be associated with chromium-6 poisoning.
Then, in 1987, PG&E took the decision to inform the State of California that they had
detected levels of chromium-6 in the groundwater near Hinkley that were some ten times greater
than the legal limit. The company also started talking to the residents of Hinkley in an effort to
allay their fears. In these efforts PG&E began purchasing land in the region, and offering to buy
homes from residents to “settle” while not acknowledging or stating with any certainty there was
an issue.
Erin Brockovich, a file clerk working at the law firm Masry & Vititoe, had read dozens of
complaints and medical records from local citizens. In 1993, Brockovich managed to persuade
648 plaintiffs, together with her boss Ed Masry, to file a class action against PG&E for injuries
caused by its actions. As the case unfolded it was revealed that an employee of PG&E had
discovered levels of contamination up to 400 times the legal limit in 1965, more than two
decades earlier, but the company had failed to act on the information or inform anyone of the
contamination so that proper steps could be taken to clean up the water around the factory.
In September 1994 both parties agreed to go to binding arbitration, rather than face a
jury. Nearly two years later a settlement was reached requiring PG&E to clean up the effects of
its pollution, stop using chromium-6 and compensate the plaintiffs to the tune of $333 million.
(Brockovich, 2008) Then in 2000 the company saw whole sorry story publicized in the Oscarwinning
film Erin Brockovich, starring Julia Roberts and Albert Finney. In 2006, to resolve the
further claims of community members and their families, the company paid an additional $295
million in February 2006.
The effect of these settlements forced the firm to "internalize" two distinct externalities of
their actions. The first externality was the medical costs and suffering endured by several
thousand people in the city as a result of the pollution, and the second was the resulting legal
costs incurred by the citizens in the process of negotiating the ‘transaction’ (which nearly
bankrupted Masry), back onto the company’s balance sheet.
To put these settlement figures in perspective, the company earned over $12 billion in
2006– primarily through the distribution of electricity and natural gas. Therefore 628,000,000
total in settlements, out of 12,000,000,000, or 5.2% of one year’s profit, for knowingly
subjecting thousands of people —for over 30 years– to proven pollution which can only be
described as poison at the level it was being consumed in.
The PG&E Web site now has a section on corporate responsibility which includes annual
environmental reports dating from 1998
In your paper discuss how the actions of PG&E affected the citizens of Hinkley.
* Provide at least two examples of how the town members suffered, and at least two
examples of how PG&E attempted to either hide their knowledge about the Chromium
levels or misguide the public