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| credit: The Advocate |
Louisiana. Acres of swamp forest was swallowed and replaced with a gaping sinkhole filled with stinking water full of brine, oil and gas, and hydrogen sulfide (unmistakable smell of "rotten eggs") {flyover video}. Since then the sinkhole has grown to eight acres in size. Scientists think the failure of an underground cavern in the Napoleonville Salt Dome caused the ground to collapse dramatically. Oil and natrual gas migrated upward from natural deposits into area waterways two months before the sinkhole appeared. Vent wells have been burning off (flaring) trapped methane. So far 2.7 million cubic feet of natural gas has been burned in the atmosphere.
It is an unprecedented environmental disaster than has received little national attention. Texas Brine, a Houston based drilling and storage firm used the underground salt cavern to recover salt-laden brine used in the petrochemical industry for years. Now, USGS experts think the company's production caused high pressures to fracture the rock and sediment above the cavern all the way to the surface. This condition is known as a "frack-out" in the industry. The company publicly claimed the collapse was due to natural seismic activity, and refused to take responsibility for the sinkhole. But the earth tremors felt in the neighborhood were caused by the cavern collapse (USGS statement 25 Sept 2012). The company has still not officially taken responsibility for the disaster. It has "acknowledged a relationship" between the collapsed salt cavern and the sinkhole. Texas Brine has been fined for failing to meet several clean up deadlines. Failure to install a promptly install a containment system has allowed nearby waterways to be contaminated by oil and other pollutants. There is also low-level radioactive fill stored at the site, a waste production of Texas Brine's operations. At a meeting one neighborhood evacuee asked officials loudly, "You expect us to go back to our houses again? Have y'all lost your minds?" Assumption Parish has the seventh highest cancer rate among Louisiana's 64 parishes. The Bayou Corne sinkhole is not going away soon. Overburdened Nature must heal this wound because there is no "magic bullet" to fix it.