Toxic Plume Spreads

     

"The plume is migrating, and this is a violation of the cleanup order,"

Folks, ordering someone to stop a plume of contaminated water from migrating underground is totally useless. Lassoing the wind might be an easier task to accomplish. Once an aquifer is contaminated, your well is basically toast for generations to follow.

The Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board, which oversees the Hinkley area, issued a cleanup and abatement order in August 2008, instructing PG&E to stop the expansion of the underground chromium plume by Dec. 31 of that year.

Picture this. A freshwater aquifer, perhaps hundreds or thousands of feet underground, gets contaminated. A group of elected officials orders a company to stop the plume of contaminants. In 4 months. Anyone with a wisp if common sense has to be asking themselves: "How on earth are they going to do that?" Well, my friends, they are not.  

Read the rest here.

Over fifty years after the California aquifer became contaminated, over 14 years after the litigation that spawned the movie "Erin Brockovich" was settled...the toxic plume continues to expand.

The plume nevertheless continued spreading. It is now 2.6 miles long and 1.3 miles wide and extends 0.6 miles farther northeast than it did two years ago, said Lisa Dernbach, the senior engineering geologist for the water board.

Dernbach said increased levels of chromium have recently been detected in about 12 domestic drinking water wells. That's in addition to the dozens of wells previously affected. Not only that, Dernbach said, but chromium has also been found in what she called "the lower aquifer," an area of groundwater separated from the upper aquifer by a layer of clay.

I guess the "impermeable" layer of clay did a lot of good. Any chance it had a few cracks in it?
 
Day by day, deal by deal, as more wells are drilled and fracked in the Marcellus Shale...we are sealing our own fate.

We need a complete moratorium and we need it now.