'Erin Brockovich' made their town famous. They still don’t have clean water.
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2024
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
In 2000, the movie “Erin Brockovich” helped put the small town of Hinkley, California, on the map. The movie stars Julia Roberts as a determined law clerk who takes on the massive utility company Pacific Gas & Electric, which had been dumping chromium-6, the dangerous chemical, in Hinkley's groundwater.
Brockovich is depicted gathering evidence and building a legal case against the utility. And she prevails: The movie concludes with a landmark settlement awarded to residents.
But that Hollywood ending isn’t the whole story. Many residents say the settlement didn’t go far to cover mounting medical bills and moving costs. And the chromium-6 cleanup proved to be slow. It was stymied by the difficulty of containing widespread contamination and a small local water board lacking the power to enforce stricter standards. Today, Hinkley is a ghost town, and the water there is still contaminated with chromium-6.
On the 50th anniversary of the Safe Drinking Water Act, investigative reporter Silvia Foster-Frau has traveled the country reporting on where America has fallen short in its promise of providing clean drinking water. In the final installment in this series, she returns to Hinkley to learn why, even with a massive spotlight, it can be so hard to clean up toxic tap water.
Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff. It was edited by Monica Campbell and mixed by Sam Bair.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Back in the year 2000, this big movie came out. |
| 0:05.0 | It stars Julia Roberts, and she plays this no-nonsense single mom who gets a job as a law clerk to support her kids. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm smart, I'm hardworking, and I'll do anything, and I'm not leaving here without a job. |
| 0:18.0 | This movie is all about a legal battle in this tiny town in Southern California, where |
| 0:26.0 | something in the water was making people sick. |
| 0:29.0 | These people don't dream about being rich. |
| 0:31.4 | They dream about being able to watch their kids swim in a pool without worrying that |
| 0:35.2 | they'll have to have a hysterectomy at the age of 20. |
| 0:38.1 | Julia Roberts' character is named Aaron Brockovich, which is also the name of the movie, |
| 0:43.3 | and she fights for the people of this town, Hinkley, California. |
| 0:47.4 | People are dying. You've got document after document here right under your nose that says |
| 0:52.4 | why, and you haven't said one word about it. |
| 0:54.6 | I want to know how the hell you sleep at night. |
| 0:58.0 | And there is a typical Hollywood happy ending. |
| 1:01.8 | The people in Hinkley win the court battle and get a huge settlement. |
| 1:06.3 | The payout comes from PG&E. |
| 1:08.6 | It's the utility company that had been dumping a dangerous chemical in the water. |
| 1:13.5 | The judge came back with a number. He's going to make them pay $333 million. And he's going to make them give $5 million of that to your family. |
| 1:27.9 | But that's not the whole story. |
| 1:30.3 | I've had to introduce myself now. |
| 1:32.0 | I'm Aaron Brockovich, not Julia Roberts. |
| 1:34.6 | The real life, Aaron Brockovich, never expected she would become a kind of symbol for environmental justice. |
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