Published: September 26th, 2012 at 5:55 pm ET
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Title: 9:00 a.m. Morning Update
Source: Assumption Parish Police Jury
Date: Sept 26, 2012
Overnight, there was a 30’ x 50’ slough in on the SE side of the sinkhole (towards Texas Brine). The slough in took many trees and part of the road that was built to park excavators on to resume cleanup activities. This area has never sloughed in before as opposed to previous slough-ins that have taken place in the same spots along the embankment of the sinkhole.
Tests continue to be run in the cavern. Once any results are available, they will be shared.
A bubbling spot was observed on Bayou Drive in Pierre Part. DEQ will take samples today that will determine if this bubbling is natural gas or “swamp gas”. Monitoring was done by OEP and there were no harmful risks detected.
We will hold a resident briefing this Saturday, September 29, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. The location is tentatively set for here at the command post; however, the weather forecast may force us to move indoors. We will advise you with details closer to Saturday through blog posts and a notification phone call.
Published: September 26th, 2012 at 5:55 pm ET
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Here is a video with a petition to the White House to help the folks in Bayou Corne.http://youtu.be/yM5QqgEC7VM
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US Strategic reserve is in four sites on the Gulf of Mexico…
Each site contains a number of artificial caverns created in salt domes below the surface.
Individual caverns within a site can be up to 1000 m below the surface, average dimensions are 60 m wide and 600 m deep, and capacity ranges from 6 to 37 million barrels (950,000 to 5,900,000 m3).
Almost $4 billion was spent on the facilities. The decision to store in caverns was made IN ORDER TO REDUCE COST; the Department of Energy claims it is roughly 10 TIMES CHEAPER to store oil below surface with the added advantages of no leaks and a constant natural churn of the oil due to a temperature gradient in the caverns. The caverns were created by drilling down and then dissolving the salt with water.
Existing Facilities
Bryan Mound – Freeport, Texas. 20 caverns with a storage capacity of 254 million barrels (40,400,000 m3) …
Big Hill – Winnie, Texas. Has a capacity of 160 million barrels (25,000,000 m3)… This facility is planned to be expanded by 250 million barrels (40,000,000 m3) with a new drawdown capacity of 1.5 million barrels (240,000 m3) per day.[7]
West Hackberry – Lake Charles, Louisiana. Has a capacity of 227 million barrels (36,100,000 m3) Bayou Choctaw –
Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Has a capacity of 76 million barrels (12,100,000 m3)This facility is planned to be expanded to 109 million barrels
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(United_States)
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Salt domes…
What is a salt dome?
Why is it a dome?
This is really interesting, if you look on a very long timscale you can compare the solid ground with elastic mud und the salt is like styrofoam… is swims to the surface.
So what looks like solid matter, is in true a "moving thing".
Yes -of course- in geological timescales.
But if you drill inside, it becomes more… volatile.
h.
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They are called domes because the way the surface side of the deposit is curve shaped, like a dome. They were essentially large air (not breathable, but geological vapors) pockets in the Earth's crust that formed as limestone was being deposited in the ocean. The center bulges upward in the center to form the dome. Salt water in these pockets evaporated and deposited the sodium chloride. The land then rises from below the surface of the ocean, cutting off the supply of salt water, allowing the salt dome to dry and fully crystalize. This is why they are usually found near the Gulf coast in the US, because it was once part of the American Sea, now reduced to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean as the plains rose.
Salt domes are the chief source of table salt that is not labeled as "sea salt". They are also depositories for natural gas, etc taken from wells. Most of the stuff deposited in salt domes doesn't react with salt. Not all the salt domes are suited for this, and instabilities of storage has plagued Gulf coast communities where this is done.
But some of the chemicals in fracking compounds do react with salt. The problem with fracking compounds is that the companies using them are not required to list what ingredients are in their compounds. And the sludge from the ground brings up natural radioactive substances with it.
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The sludge is radioactive, carcinogenic, toxic in the extreme, one of the nastiest chemical compounds ever produced by mankind. It is lethal posion, to state it mildly. And it is showing up in many places, water tables, lakes, soil, and now salt domes. Fracking compounds in water tables are capable of melting reverse osmosis filters. There is no way to purify water that has been contaminated by it. And the companies using it are protected from liability, both legal and financial, for virtually anything they do with it. They can dump it in a lake and not break any laws, because the federal laws governing it negate any state or local laws concerning such environmental acts.
Fracking needs to be stopped. It is not safe in any regard. The damage being caused is exceeding all the profit made from using it. The problem is that those using it are not bound by law to compensate for damages, so it is profitable to them at the expense of everyone else.
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dosdos: Thank you for geological descriptions! A question re "The problem with fracking compounds is that … the sludge from the ground brings up natural radioactive substances with it."
So I take it that the brew forced into rock by human technology to achieve fracking does its job, then returns to surface bringing with it newly acquired radioactive substances once undisturbed below .. and this "used brew, complete with it's newly added radioactive ingredient" is the "sludge" you refer to?
Thanks!!
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informative vid on salt domes…Lake Peigneur sinkhole disaster 1980! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddlrGkeOzsI
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When the radioactive material is mentioned it is termed "non-natural nuclear waste" and while radon is a natural radioactive gas, it may not be present in the salt cavern which has now grown to cover 4 acres. The Texas Brine owner is using any other circumstance to relieve itself of responsibility including that the trouble began because of earthquakes. There were no registered quakes because the USGS considered them to be man made through drilling for natural gas and called them "tremors". The salt dome has now collapsed into itself. No recent mention of the liquid butane stored nearby or whether a match thrown onto the sludge of the sinkhole would start a fire or explosion. There is a great deal of talk on the web in consideration of the New Madrid Fault in danger of a major earthquake, although in my view of the seismic/quake charts the quakes are mostly under 2 with only a handfull being 3. Something is obviously very wrong with the situation and the experts are at a loss to resolve the mess.
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