Erin Brockovich town's second battle

Erin Brockovich town's second battle: "

Residents of Hinkley, made famous by Julia Roberts film, fight to stop history repeating itself over contaminated water supply

Ten years ago the small town of Hinkley shot to international attention with the release of Erin Brockovich – the movie starring Julia Roberts that dramatised the town's battle over its contaminated water supply. Now the community of fewer than 2,000 people in California's Mojave Desert is fighting again to try to stop history repeating itself.

Tempers among residents are set to run high tonight at a meeting with water board officials, representatives of California's largest utility company PG&E and Brockovich herself.

Just as they did two decades ago, PG&E's men with thick chequebooks are circling the town, and have written to 100 landowners in the Hinkley area, offering to buy up homes on land where groundwater may be affected by pollution in the water supply.

PG&E says it is committed to cleaning up the area but residents are sceptical. Norman Diaz, whose family has been in Hinkley for six generations, said: "The meeting is going to be a circus. It's going to be like a scene out of a movie, it's not going to be productive at all. PG&E is using this to play us, because anything useful that we ask for doesn't get accomplished. This is just another kick in the teeth for Hinkley."

Between 1952 and 1966, Hinkley's groundwater was turned toxic by hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen used to prevent rust in the cooling towers at the natural gas compression station nearby. The run-off from the towers, which shimmered in the heat of the Mojave Desert, ended up in unlined holding pools that allowed the toxic chemicals to leach into the town's drinking water.

After the scandal became public thanks to Brockovich's class action, PG&E was ordered to contain the toxic plume to prevent it spreading through the town's second and deeper aquifer. The remaining residents went back to their ranches, and drilled deeper to a second aquifer they were told was uncontaminated.

But recent data from monitoring wells in the lower aquifer have shown high levels of chromium six. Analytical data collected in May this year from one well showed a 4,600% increase from 2005 levels of chromium 6 in the lower aquifer. Monitoring data also revealed that the plume, now 2.8 miles long and 1.5 miles wide, appears to be spreading alarmingly fast at about one foot a day.

Carmella Gonzalez, a Hinkley resident who raised concerns about the spread of contamination to the Lahontan Water Board, said: 'When I found that it had gone to the lower aquifer, I was beside myself. That was always the safe water, and we were always told drill down deeper to the lower aquifer, it's clean and not contaminated. They have allowed this plume to spread and it just sickens me.'

A PG&E spokesman said the company was working hard on improving the water supply. "There is absolutely nothing more important to PG&E than the health and safety of the people of Hinkley and we are completely committed to cleaning up the area. But this is something that takes time. We will be here to clean it up to that level."

The utility company has been ordered by the water board to contain the plume and reduce chromium 6 levels to 3.1 parts per billion, well below the California state standard of 50 parts per billion. But even PG&E's own feasibility study shows that natural attenuation to reduce chromium levels to background levels would take up to 1,000 years.

The prospect of Hinkley becoming a ghost town horrifies some in the community. Diaz said: "There are a lot of families who have been in the area five or six generations and we don't want to go anywhere... We want PG&E to invest in infrastructure instead of destruction. Build us something that shows that they're a good neighbour and they're going to be with us for another 100 years."

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