article_snippet: The convenience store and sole gas station was first hollowed out by in the 1990s the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), which had been buying up local properties for decades, only for many more residents to flee after the organization was proven to have contaminated groundwater with hexavalent chromium.
article_snippet: According to Vice, PG&E  continued PG&E   buy out to reduce the risk of any more lawsuits.
article_snippet: During the 1950s and 1960s, PG&E   used chromium-6 to kill algae and protect the metal at the metal Hinkley natural gas pumping station.
article_snippet: Decades later, residents blamed residents illnesses on a plume of contaminated groundwater that is 8 miles long and 2 miles wide.
highlights_snippet: Many locals took the offers and others fled the toxic water .
  
highlights_snippet: Hexavalent chromium contaminated the groundwater, causing numerous cancers and illnesses to residents over time .
  