INDUSTRIAL WASTE MANAGEMENT REACTION PAPER SCORESHEET

Name: ___________________________________________________________________________

Subject Code: CH E 513 Class Schedule: 10:30-11:30 M W F

Date Submitted:______________
CRITERIA REMARKS SCORE
CONTENT: (70 pts)

Concise movie plot: 10 pts

key points clearly chosen 30 pts
and reactions well stated
Movie reflections: 10 pts
Answer on the imposed 20 pts
questions:
PRESENTATION: (30 pts)

Spelling and Grammar: 10 pts

Organization of thoughts: 20 pts
PRELIMINARY TOTAL
ORIGINALITY:
% plagiarism accepted= 15%

For %plagiarism > 15 %

Initial Preliminary Total
Total = x
Score % Originality

Initial Total Score: _________________

Merits and Demerits:

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Final Total Score: __________________

CHAPTER 1: MOVIE PLOT

The movie “Erin Brockovich” is all about single mother trying to raise her three
young children while looking for a job. After a failed lawsuit against a doctor in a car accident she
was in, Erin is incapable to pay her apartment’s rent. Thus, she decided to show up at the office of
her lawyer, Ed Masry, to ask him to give her a job in compensation for her loss in which Ed yields.
Erin was tasked with a real estate case wherein the Pacific Gas and Electric (PG & E)
Company is suggesting to buy the house of Donna Jensen, a resident of Hinckley, California, to
build a highway to their company. Erin’s interest was aroused that leads her to investigate the case.
She found out that Donna’s family had many medical issues that was caused by the water being
contaminated with carcinogenic hexavalent chromium. The PG & E tries to cover up by telling the
Hinckley residents that they use a milder form of chromium. Erin is called by Brenda, Ed’s
secretary, that she had been fired for missing a week of work since she was away from the office
busy investigating.
Later on, Erin was rehired since Ed needs the documents she gathered in the investigation.
Erin continues to investigate and discovered that over 600 people are ill because of the water
contamination. Erin encouraged the residents to file a lawsuit against the PG & E company for
punitive damages. Now a man named Charles Embry tells to her that he was one of the PG& E
company and that his cousin was one of the victims from the poison. He confessed that he was
assigned to destroy document which includes a 19966 memo from corporate headquarters
validating the contamination of water and that they did not do anything about it. Using this
document, the PG & E was ordered by the judge court to pay a settlement of $333 million to be
divided by the complainants and that $5 million goes to Donna’s family.
CHAPTER 2: REACTION ON MOVIE KEY POINTS

KEY POINT 1: Single mother trying to raise her three young children while looking for a job.
REACTION:
Nowadays, one of the challenges that single parent families encounter is social and
economic welfare. It can be seen that single parent families have a high probability of being poor
that two parent families and there are prejudices especially to single parents that are mothers. They
do not encounter the same opportunity as that of others.

KEY POINT 2: Erin is called by Brenda, Ed’s secretary, that she had been fired for missing a week
of work since she was away from the office busy investigating
REACTION:
It can be seen in the movie that the case was investigated for many days because of the
processes that needs to be done. In reality, this can be related in doing research especially in
gathering data since it uses much of time.

KEYPOINT 3: Erin found out that Donna’s family had many medical issues that was caused by the
water being contaminated with carcinogenic hexavalent chromium.
REACTION:
Industries like mining, manufacturing, waste disposal and others are one of the most water
polluters based on Environmental Protection Agency. These companies contaminate drinking water
which is caused by not dumping and disposing their waste properly that leads to arsenic, lead,
mercury or chromium poisoning.

KEYPOINT 4: Erin continues to investigate and discovered that over 600 people are ill because of
the water contamination.
REACTION:
In the movie, Erin encourage over 600 people to pursue lawsuit and that she had to go to
every house of the residents for them to sign petitions. It can be seen that research requires
perseverance and patience in order to reach your goal because if you do not have that attitude this
will just lead to failure.

KEYPOINT 5: Charles Embry confessed that he was assigned to destroy document which includes
a 19966 memo from corporate headquarters validating the contamination of water and that they did
not do anything about it.
REACTION:
This situation had been going on since then. Some industries are not currently
regulated they tend to be careless in their waste disposal not knowing that they had
contaminated the residential water supply wells. Now the groundwater is contaminated and
could possibly be a risk to the human health.
CHAPTER 3: REACTIONS ON THE MOVIE AS A WHOLE

“If you are already an engineer back then living at Hinckley, what would you have
done?”

Today, water pollution is considered as one of the top concerns in the

environment. According to World Health Organization, in the year 2008, it was
estimated that 13% of the world’s population did not have the liberty to safe drinking
water. Another is that 40% of the world’s population lacked to have improved
sanitation. Each year, millions of people passed on due to unsafe drinking of water,
poor hygiene, insufficient sanitation and other more. In reality, enhancement of water
quality, sanitation and hygiene would help to stop up to 9% of all disease and 6% of all
deaths.
If I were an engineer back then and was living at Hinckley, I would like to help
the PG & E company to design wastewater treatment plant and let them understand
that this would lessen the environmental and societal impacts. Having a wastewater
treatment plant would not only help in killing pathogens that can cause diseases but
also prevent or lessen the amount of pollutants and toxic heavy metals present is
untreated water. This would also help solve the global water pollution to enhance our
water quality.