HINKLEY >> Pacific Gas & Electric Co. officials have notified residents here that their programs to provide bottled water for some and a sophisticated water filtration system to others would end Oct. 31.
In its letter mailed Wednesday, San Francisco-based utility giant PG&E noted that levels of chromium-6 in Hinkley’s domestic wells were below California’s recently established drinking water standard for chromium-6.
Meanwhile, water quality regulators say that because all residents have readings of the cancer-causing chemical below the 10 parts per billion determined to be safe, they no longer have the authority to require these water programs.
However, that assertion has drawn fire from Erin Brockovich and her scientific adviser, Robert Bowcock.
PG&E has been providing bottled water to eligible Hinkley residents since 2010 and since April 2012 has offered a whole house replacement water system.
About 200 residences receive bottled water from PG&E while a little more than 30 have the filtration systems installed, said Jeff Smith, a PG&E spokesman.
Additionally, PG&E said it would end its program to buy homes in Hinkley also on Oct. 31. Since 2010, PG&E has purchased 196 homes, Smith said.
When told of PG&E’s decision, several Hinkley residents said the determination of the new state standard was deeply intertwined with politics — not science.
“I know 10 parts per billion is way too high,” said Daron Banks, a longtime member of the unincorporated community’s Community Advisory Committee.
“I know people who have been exposed to less (chromium-6) and they have significant health problems,” Banks said.
Banks and other residents said they hope the California Water Resources Control Board would overturn a regional board’s position that PG&E can no longer be required to provide water alternatives for Hinkley residents.
That stance, outlined in a letter to some Hinkley property owners earlier this month, is “a viscous circle of anti-decision,” said Bowcock, founder of Claremont-based Integrated Resource Management.
In a joint conference call, Brockovich and Bowcock maintain that Patty Kouyoumdjian, executive officer of the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, “misstates” the facts about a case she cites as the rationale for not being able to require continuation of PG&E’s water programs.
The South Lake Tahoe-based Lahontan board is responsible for the cleanup of Hinkley’s chromium-6 plume — the largest of its kind in the world.
The Lahontan board is one of nine regional water regulatory agencies under the umbrella of the state Water Resources Control Board.
“I realize this is frustrating because you believe the replacement water should be continued, …” Kouyoumdjian wrote in the letter dated July 18. “Unfortunately, we have to comply with the existing law. …”
Brockovich and Bowcock said they planned to ask the parent agency of the Lahontan Regional Quality Control Board to review Kouyoumdjian’s position and interpretation of a 2005 case.
With the release of the movie “Erin Brockovich” in 2000, both the previously unknown legal clerk and the Hinkley community’s toxic plume became internationally famous.
On July 1, California became the first governmental body in the nation to set a drinking water limit for chromium-6.
If there are changes, there will be a time lag before implementation so residents can weigh alternatives.
PG&E’s Smith said the annual cost of the whole household resin filter systems, which are installed outside of a resident’s house, can range from $2,000 to about $10,000 per year.
A reverse osmosis system, which is installed inside those homes electing to use the large resin-based filtration systems, cost as little as $50 per year to operate, Smith said.
Hinkley resident and Barstow schoolteacher Barbara Ray said she might continue, with her own money, the reverse osmosis filtration but will have PG&E cart off the large external system, although “friends tell me I should put it on e-Bay.”
Jon Quass, a Hinkley resident since 1974, said that when PG&E stops delivering bottled water, he and his wife may buy their own bottled water — even though the family well has “non-detect” readings for chromium-6.
Prior to July 1, the California limit had been 50 parts per billion total chromium, a figure that includes both chromium-3, which is not a carcinogen, and chromium-6, an atomic relative that has been shown to cause several types of cancers.
The federal standard remains 100 parts per billion.
During the 1950s and the 1960s, PG&E used chromium-6 to protect the metal of its cooling towers used to keep natural gas flowing at its Hinkley compressor station.
Periodically those cooling tower liquids, including chromium-6, were dumped into unlined ponds, where chromium-6 seeped through the dirt and entered the large underground water supply beneath Hinkley.
The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board ordered PG&E to develop a whole-house filtration system before the maximum contaminant level, or MCL, was established but after the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment set the public health goal for chromium-6 at 0.02 parts per billion.
That final number was revised downward from a 2009 proposal after scientists who reviewed the original document said its calculations did not sufficiently account for chromium-6 risks in children and other special risk populations.
Public Health Goals, or PHG, represent health-protective goals based solely on public health considerations and are developed based on the best available data in the scientific literature, says the California Department of Public Health website.
The PHG provides the scientific basis for the California Department of Health Services (DHS) to establish a primary drinking water standard, a state website says.
By law, DHS will consider economic factors and technical feasibility in setting the minimum content level, or MCL. The PHG also provides relevant information on the chemical to federal, state and local public health officials.
That reduction in the public health goal spooked many Hinkley residents into believing chromium-6 was even more deadly than originally thought.
So when the MCL was set, many residents — and Brockovich — felt the new standard was not protective enough.
In the case of Kouyoumdjian’s letter, Brockovich and Bowcock maintain the Lahontan agency overlooks the importance of the public health goal by not using it as leverage to continue PG&E’s chromium-free water programs.
