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Showing Original Post only (View all)'The biggest ongoing disaster in the United States you haven't heard of' [View all]
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/22/1233033/--The-biggest-ongoing-disaster-in-the-United-States-you-haven-t-heard-ofThu Aug 22, 2013 at 07:35 AM PDT
'The biggest ongoing disaster in the United States you haven't heard of'
by Jen Hayden
Incredible video of a sinkhole, located south of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, swallowing whole trees, @ link~
Tim Murphy at Mother Jones described the sinkhole at Bayou Corne as "the biggest ongoing disaster in the United States you haven't heard of."
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/08/bayou-corne-sinkhole-disaster-louisiana-texas-brine
......One night in August 2012, after months of unexplained seismic activity and mysterious bubbling on the bayou, a sinkhole opened up on a plot of land leased by the petrochemical company Texas Brine, forcing an immediate evacuation of Bayou Corne's 350 residentsan exodus that still has no end in sight. Last week, Louisiana filed a lawsuit against the company and the principal landowner, Occidental Chemical Corporation, for damages stemming from the cavern collapse.
Texas Brine's operation sits atop a three-mile-wide, mile-plus-deep salt deposit known as the Napoleonville Dome, which is sheathed by a layer of oil and natural gas, a common feature of the salt domes prevalent in Gulf Coast states. The company specializes in a process known as injection mining, and it had sunk a series of wells deep into the salt dome, flushing them out with high-pressure streams of freshwater and pumping the resulting saltwater to the surface. From there, the brine is piped and trucked to refineries along the Mississippi River and broken down into sodium hydroxide and chlorine for use in manufacturing everything from paper to medical supplies.
Bayou Corne is the biggest ongoing disaster in the United States you haven't heard of.
What happened in Bayou Corne, as near as anyone can tell, is that one of the salt caverns Texas Brine hollowed outa mine dubbed Oxy3collapsed. The sinkhole initially spanned about an acre. Today it covers more than 24 acres and is an estimated 750 feet deep. It subsists on a diet of swamp life and cypress trees, which it occasionally swallows whole. It celebrated its first birthday recently, and like most one-year-olds, it is both growing and prone to uncontrollable burps, in which a noxious brew of crude oil and rotten debris bubbles to the surface. But the biggest danger is invisible; the collapse unlocked tens of millions of cubic feet of explosive gases, which have seeped into the aquifer and wafted up to the community. The town blames the regulators. The regulators blame Texas Brine. Texas Brine blames some other company, or maybe the regulators, or maybe just God.
Texas Brine's operation sits atop a three-mile-wide, mile-plus-deep salt deposit known as the Napoleonville Dome, which is sheathed by a layer of oil and natural gas, a common feature of the salt domes prevalent in Gulf Coast states. The company specializes in a process known as injection mining, and it had sunk a series of wells deep into the salt dome, flushing them out with high-pressure streams of freshwater and pumping the resulting saltwater to the surface. From there, the brine is piped and trucked to refineries along the Mississippi River and broken down into sodium hydroxide and chlorine for use in manufacturing everything from paper to medical supplies.
Bayou Corne is the biggest ongoing disaster in the United States you haven't heard of.
What happened in Bayou Corne, as near as anyone can tell, is that one of the salt caverns Texas Brine hollowed outa mine dubbed Oxy3collapsed. The sinkhole initially spanned about an acre. Today it covers more than 24 acres and is an estimated 750 feet deep. It subsists on a diet of swamp life and cypress trees, which it occasionally swallows whole. It celebrated its first birthday recently, and like most one-year-olds, it is both growing and prone to uncontrollable burps, in which a noxious brew of crude oil and rotten debris bubbles to the surface. But the biggest danger is invisible; the collapse unlocked tens of millions of cubic feet of explosive gases, which have seeped into the aquifer and wafted up to the community. The town blames the regulators. The regulators blame Texas Brine. Texas Brine blames some other company, or maybe the regulators, or maybe just God.
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'The biggest ongoing disaster in the United States you haven't heard of' [View all]
babylonsister
Aug 2013
OP
I've known this for a few years, and started following anomalist on an off about a year ago.
PDJane
Aug 2013
#21
You can BET the local radio is full of right wing talkers filling their heads with nonsense....
Spitfire of ATJ
Aug 2013
#16
People will say, "They're not STUPID, they're UNINFORMED" to which I say,...
Spitfire of ATJ
Aug 2013
#24
"If we dig precious things from the Earth, we will invite disaster." ~Hopi prophecy
Fire Walk With Me
Aug 2013
#26
The media is too involved in Snowden and Manning issues to cover much else. nt
kelliekat44
Aug 2013
#32
Take a good, long look at the poster for the movie "Waiting for 'Superman'" to discover their agenda
blkmusclmachine
Aug 2013
#34