What's happened in my career has been about knowing myself and realizing my flaws are my strengths, and to embrace them; to access what I'm really good at, and what I'm not so good at; and tune out the voices that get inside your head and make you think you can't do something.
— Erin Brockovich
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.
Contaminated water is not a problem limited to Flint. Think of New Jersey, where school fountains were found to contain unsafe levels of lead. Or the EPA's 33,000 superfund sites, which are highly-polluted areas that require long-term clean-up operations. The problem is so large that it feels insurmountable.
Almonds, carrots, quinoa, soy products, vegetable oil, corn and corn oil, canola seeds used in canola oil, beets and beet sugar, sweet potatoes - these are just some of the foodstuffs which typically contain high levels of glyphosate.
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.
I have never moved away from my mainstay - trying to address all the environmental issues that come to me. I consult with law firms in the U.S., Australia, the U.K., Italy, Greece, and India to begin to address environmental disasters. I do motivational speaking.
When we uncovered the Hinkley case, there were so many other cases like it, and they're just catching up. And we're just starting to see the damage. I was hoping by now there would be more transparency and less defeat and cover-up. I haven't seen much of that change.
The Porter Ranch situation is the BP oil spill on land.
Corporations in communities need to be better neighbors.
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.
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.
Water is on the table for every single one us. When it's gone, game over. I don't care what company you run; I don't care if you're Republican or liberal.
Hinkley will be a ghost town. It will be another town lost in America due to pollution.
There's a very fundamental basic value system that I think America was built upon, and that's mutual respect, honor, integrity and concern for our environment and the right to clean water. And we have moved away from it.
The fact is that Sarah Palin positively emanates strength. She gives off the aura of being a strong woman who doesn't back down, and she does it sporting heels and wearing her family like a badge of honour. I am sure there are a million other women out there who are doing the same thing.
It's been a wild journey for me. I'm trying to take what I've learned and help teach, inspire, and lead the way for the next women. And that does begin with the cliche of loving yourself.
Even when safety guidelines and regulations are in place, the rate of chemicals acceptable by law may be far higher than what is genuinely safe.
The issues that most impact the average person are made at the local level.
Things will only improve when the people - all of us - say to authorities, 'I will hold you responsible.' We should all be showing up at city council meetings, lighting up every community with activism and mobilization.
The worst sense of security is a false one. It's hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that those in charge - federal, state and local agencies - might be cheating the system. But, all too often, that is exactly what happens.
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.
I still describe myself as the activist with cleavage. Breast implants made me feel a lot sexier.
I'm concerned that we don't address the water pollution problems in other countries. If we move forward and don't clean up the messes of the past, they'll just get swept under the rug.
It is high time SoCalGas is held responsible for its actions.
Communities have indicated they'd like support for an advisory board. See, communities want jobs. They don't want a company to go away. They work for those companies. That's how they feed their families, send their kids to college. But they don't want to be poisoned, either.
Saying drinking water is 'safe' without any supporting documentation is wrong. Resting on the comfort that the DHEC and the USEPA are there to give you cover is the same mistake the City of Flint made.
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.
This is our country, our water. We're entitled to a good life. It's a human rights issue.
I could see jealousy coming up, I could see anger, I could see frustration. I could see people's agendas. I could see my kids going wild - because we never had any money, and suddenly, we had money.
The issues that we're having with water are worse and the magnitude is bigger than anything I imagined possible.
I believe that we have a huge problem with the water in America. We don't want to make that connection that these chemicals, at varying levels, in our water supplies, over time, is, in fact, related to our disease process. And it concerns me greatly.
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.
I don't feel the need to defend myself anymore - I am a woman. I feel differently and I think differently than a man. If you're going to bully me or laugh at me because something makes me emotional - you go right ahead because that's what makes me a woman, and I don't want to be anything but that.
If a community water system is forced to conduct a chlorine burn because they are experiencing nitrification, it is because they have failed... It is a remedial action to correct a serious problem they themselves have created because they are cheating on the regulations.
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.
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.
Glyphosate is only one of more than 80,000 registered commercially produced chemicals in the U.S. Some of these compounds, such as PFOA and the one I made my name investigating, hexavalent chromium, have also been convincingly linked to health crises - testicular cancer in the case of PFOA and lung cancer in the case of chromium-6.
My father was in the Navy. He is very tall and has a big presence. When he was angry, he stared you right in the face and didn't look away until you told him the truth. He never yelled, but you never wanted to lose his respect, and that was scary.
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.
Awareness is key. In the absence of information, none of us know what is happening and what could be jeopardizing our health, our water supply, and our planet.
It's not just Porter Ranch. There's communities like Chatsworth. There's communities like Northridge. There's communities like Granada Hills - and a lot of them are writing to me.
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.
Preemption is not about the Essure women - it affects all consumers. If someone had a medical device installed, there's no recourse for victims, and the company is protected. If there's a problem, the company gets a pass because they have preemption. It dawned on me the consumer didn't know. The women didn't know that this existed.
Companies could step up to the plate time and time again and help out by cleaning up a groundwater system that's contaminated, being more transparent with the community when they have a problem, respecting that community, getting them out of harm's way.
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.
The movie had a much bigger impact on me than I ever thought that it did.
I'd like to find and vote for a candidate, whether Republican or Democrat... that has the best interest in the health and welfare of everybody in this country.
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.
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 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.
