I always say I stumbled on the information about the poison in Hinkley's drinking water because I was sort of stumbling about in my life at that time generally, as a single mother.
When I discovered that hexavalent chromium was causing cancer in the town of Hinkley, California, it led to residents being paid $333m in compensation. But, unbelievably, that chemical remains in our drinking water.
The water system in this country is overwhelmed, and we aren't putting enough resources towards this essential resource. We simply can't continue to survive with toxic drinking water.
In a broader sense, the irony in all of this is the single most necessary element for life to exist, in fact, is killing everything, from our ecosystems to potentially our food supply if we're poisoning fish and the foods that we eat. That is the broader sense.
At least three studies, in the U.S., Canada and Sweden, have linked glyphosate exposure to the disease, and in 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer found glyphosate to be a 'probable' cause of cancer in humans. California's state environmental protection agency has also declared it a probable carcinogen.
There's been a false sense of security in the American people when it comes to environment issues and our water, because they believe that the EPA is there to protect us, and unfortunately, that system's not working right now. They're overburdened, understaffed, and underfunded.
I was born and raised in Kansas. The worst things are the locusts, mosquitos, the flatness, the humidity. The greatest things are the simplicity of life, watching the thunderheads building on the horizon, and running through cornfields.
It is high time SoCalGas is held responsible for its actions.
I get thousands of emails. Half my work is environment-related; the rest is pharmaceutical problems. There's so much of it. No one law firm can handle it now.
If we could begin to look at water pollution as a human rights violation, and we could begin to look at criminal aspects of this, I think that could be a game changer for many companies who want to not be forthwith and think that they can just hold off in a lawsuit for 10 years, and in the meantime, people are still being poisoned.
I was a simple girl born and raised in Kansas, I grew up with a learning disability. I was a single mum, and I definitely struggled in a male dominated world. But you need to allow yourself those moments to cry.
Be informed, ask questions, band together with your community, and fight at the local level. And make sure you take your local elections as seriously as the national ones.
The issues that most impact the average person are made at the local level.
The issues that we're having with water are worse and the magnitude is bigger than anything I imagined possible.
You cannot put a contaminant in the ground and just think that Mother Nature whips it up and runs it off somewhere else and we never see it again.
I'm very happy about 'Last Call At The Oasis.' I hope it's a wake up call... we caused the problem, but we can be the solution.
It's hard not to let criticism make you feel bad about yourself - I do continue to struggle with that as an older woman in the workplace.
I don't believe that the world is that crazy that they have nothing to better to do with their time than send me emails and tell me these outlandish stories. So I've started to plot the communities that have come to me on a map.
Hinkley will be a ghost town. It will be another town lost in America due to pollution.
The Porter Ranch situation is the BP oil spill on land.
