Bayou Corne Joins List Of Towns Destroyed By Pollution After Sinkhole Settlement Reached

[hatrack]

Bayou Corne, 77 miles west of New Orleans, can be added to the growing list of communities destroyed by industrial accidents. “I wanted to stay in Bayou Corne for the rest of my life. I wanted to die here,” Mike Schaff, who recently moved out, told DeSmogBlog. “Texas Brine took that away from me. It’s like a ghost town now.”

The area was known as a picturesque sportsman's paradise for its waterways teeming with fish and alligators, but is now famous for a giant sinkhole that opened up on August 3, 2012 after a salt dome cavern owned by Occidental Chemical Corp. and operated by Texas Brine Co. LLC, collapsed. Scientists working for the state concluded Texas Brine drilled too close to the dome's edge, leading to the formation of the sinkhole.

The Department of Natural Resources (DNR), which regulates oil and gas drilling in Louisiana, held Texas Brine responsible, though the company has never acknowledged fault. Texas Brine was forced to pay a weekly $875 evacuation assitance check to residents and still must do so for the few that didn’t sell their property to the company. The sinkhole released natural deposits of methane gas into the aquifer that spread underneath Bayou Corne, leading officials to call for a mandatory evacuation. The gas under a home has the potential to build up undetected and explode. Of the 350 residents who lived there before the sinkhole, only a small fraction remain.

EDIT

A $48.1 million settlement covered 86 home buyouts, and compensation for all other losses, including mental anguish and lawyers' fees. A judge must sign off on the $25 million-plus fee the lawyers have requested. The amount the lawyers stand to receive angers Jamie Weber, a former resident of Bayou Corne who doesn't believe the class action lawsuit was fair. “I've never had a lawyer who was representing me bully me, pressure me, interrogate me, care less about each person and their family, and many other things I can list,” Weber told DeSmogBlog. She wonders if the firms were paid off by Texas Brine to accept a low settlement since she believes what the lawyers settled for fell short of what people needed in replacement value for their homes.

EDIT

http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/03/06/ghost-town-left-wake-bayou-corne-sinkhole

[Dustlawyer]

1. They vote Republican until their own ox gets gored!

Republican's are for local control and state's rights until it conflicts with what they want! Add this example of the local zoning against Fracking about to be overridden by the state of Louisiana to the list that includes Republican's trying to get the Feds to go after the marihuana business in states where it is legal.