NO END IN SIGHT TO ASSUMPTION
PARISH’S HUNGRY TOXIC NIGHTMARE
Echoes of Lake Peignor?
Located between Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou about 70 miles west of New Orleans, the Assumption Parish sinkhole is a witches brew of salt water and chemicals that could swallow the Superdome and ask for more. At least 350 citizens of the town of Bayou Cone have been evacuated and are unlikely to ever return as the petroleum interests that run Louisiana keep a lid on the story. When all is said and done, the residents of the area will be bought out and the place name will join Times Beach and Centralia, PA. as non-places for the next many centuries. But mind you Mapsters, these are not natural diasters.
WHAT HAPPENED HERE?
The sinkhole first appeared on August 3, 2012 after months of unusual tremors1 and gaseous bubblings up in area waterways. On that date, the sinkhole emerged as a 4 acre portion of cypress woods was simply sucked underground, leaving a smelly lake of hydrocarbons, visible and invisible, behind. Within a few days, over 150 homes near the sinkhole were evacuated and the residents have not been able to return since. Some say they will never return home again. Certainly property values are down.
This other worldly event was caused by the failure of an underground hydrocarbon “salt” cavern in the Napoleonville Salt Dome. The cavern was previously mined and used as a storage vault by Texas Brine, Llc of Houston. The extracted brine is used to make chlorine, which is used to manufacture poly vinyl chloride at hundreds of plants in the area, also known as Cancer Alley. The caverns are also used to store all manner of petroleum products for Texas Brine’s clients, such as Occidental Petroleum and Bayer, all nice folks. Scientists concur the Texas Brine cavern was carved too close to the outer face of the Napoleonville Dome, causing its outer wall to collapse at 5,600 feet underground, just short of a mile. Millions of cubic yards of rock flowed into it. The cavern continues to fill with methane and crude oil and other material surrounding the salt dome, which is not good stuff to bring to the surface.
As a result, the aquifers in the Bayou Corne and Gran Bayou area are bedevlied by hydrocarbon gases of various descriptions. Texas Brine does not dispute the reports, but claims the cavern failure was caused by the seismic activity that preceded the emergence of the sinkhole. Even though the area is not historicall prone to seismic events1. Missing in their statement is the fact that they shut down the operation in 2010 due to “anomalies” in their testing. Did they know something was FUBAR? the Editorial Board asks rhetorically. Earthquake swarms continue to occur around the sinkhole. Noxious, sometimes poisonous fumes are reported throughout the area as Texas Brine continues ignoring or disputing the directives of the local authorities. It is not clear whether the local authorities are all that concerned either, but there are a lot of meetings. Certainly the tough talkin’ governor of Louisiana shows every sign of wishing the sinkhole would go away, certainly before his run for President. We in the Editorial Board bunker think this problem will both not go away, and yet will disappear from the public consciousness it has failed to penetrate in the first place.
Nine months after the initial subsidence, the original 4 acres hole has grown to over 15 acres, poisonous sulfur dioxide has been detected in ventholes and a crude oil slick meanders across its surface. Methane bubbles up in the center as the sunken area spreads closer to both Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou, also posing a possible threat to Highway 70. Texas Brine2, a company with connections to much larger chemical and petroleum interests, thumbs its nose at directives and refuses to pay fines. That’s what lawyers are for, after all.
WHAT WENT BEFORE: ARROGANCE, DECEPTION AND A CALCULATED RISK For a scientific history of the sinkhole cause and effect scenario, read this hitory at FreedomRox.