Published: September 30th, 2012 at 10:15 am ET
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Watch video of residents speaking at the latest sinkhole briefing here
Title: Sinkhole evacuees anxious to return home
Source: The Advocate
Author: BY MARK H. HUNTER
Date: September 30, 2012
[...]
“Obviously, this is a lot more complex than I would have ever thought and even the scientists are finding it very complex,” Assumption Parish President Marty Triche told the crowd. “This is a very serious situation because we don’t call mandatory evacuations very lightly.
[...]
Preston Guilbeau, who left his home two hours after the evacuation order was issued, said he is concerned the problem is much larger than just this particular sinkhole or the Napoleonville Dome’s apparently damaged salt cavern.
“If this one collapsed, who knows if we won’t have another cavern collapse in the future?” Guilbeau asked. “This cavern is spilt milk. Water under the bridge. It’s the other ones I’m worried about.”
[Bayou Corne sinkhole evacuee Harry Boudreaux] said the entire area around the community is sinking. He told how he used to go crawfishing in the 1960s near the site where the sinkhole now sits, and had to climb a fence near the highway and hike 500 feet through the woods to get to the bayou.
“Now the fence is underwater and water’s right up against the road,” Boudreaux said. “I think the whole dome is sinking.
[...]
The slick’s odor is so powerful it can be smelled from La. 70, a half-mile distance. Some residents claim the diesel vapors are making them ill.
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Anyone experiencing health issues may call parish authorities at (985) 369-7435.
Watch: Official: is the dome stable? Risk being evaluated
Published: September 30th, 2012 at 10:15 am ET
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sending...
Even if the other domes don't cave in, sounds like (cause Texas brine won't say)the one dome was filled with such toxic matter, no one could survive there anymore. The land, water and air….too polluted to live in the area.
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… just do not expect 'truthfulness' from the 'authorities' any time soon … the corporate, narcissistic ethos will be serviced …
peace …
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when this cavern finished breaching, we should expect a large venting of Propane and radioactive scale. The propane is a near term threat because it's kind of heavy and will need time to disperse.
the radioactive scale is a threat to drinking water and breathing, plus i sure wouldn't want to grow crop around there. I assume it will head into the mississippi so, that's not good for downstream drinking water. The locals who pull water should fill their reservoirs to the tippy top, and,
start active monitoring or bring online old wells to allow time to let the radiation plume move downstream.
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Venting of propane? I'm not sure where you got that from. Natural gas accumulates in sealed salt caverns – as far as I know, they flared off whatever was left in #3 last week.
All the Texas Brine wells – the ones on 'their' road – are ONLY brine production wells. None are used for storage of anything. They're called either Oxy-Geismar ## or Occidental Brine ## on Slide #2 of this presentation (from mid-August):
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdnr.louisiana.gov%2Fassets%2Fdocs%2Fconservation%2F12.Assumption.Aug.Slide.Presentation.pdf
Across the Texas Brine road to the East there are two Crosstex LPG Storage wells. #2 was closest to the sinkhole, but still on the other side of all other Texas Brine wells. #2 *had* a million barrels of butane in it, but that's been transferred to Crosstex #1 even further to the East. They could draw that down in a matter of days if they had to.
Cheveron *had* 5 million barrels of natural gas in its Napoleonville #1, but that's been drawn down for a month. There's no other storage caverns on the west side of Grand Bayou.
The cavern-stored gas is probably not the issue. The entire salt dome is ringed by upward-sloping layers of gas- and oil-bearing sands. That's why there's so much oil/gas drilling around salt domes. The source of the natural gas bubbles could be from natural deposits (now) leaking up the side of the salt dome.
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Paveway,
if the caverns are drained, thats good, what will come up is more residuals and scale from drilling.
Now how did this thing fail? seems really deep, either there was a hidden fault or they blew something.
I am iwth the they screwed the pooch.
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Quote:
Please be aware that the diesel smell will be heightened due to this task and the “stirring up of things”.
CLICK> http://assumptionla.wordpress.com/
Why do I feel like there is more to this.
This has gotten larger.
Salt Domes were Injected, Radiative Substance, Butane, Methane, Fracking, Ground Shaking, Smells, People getting Sick, Gas Bubbles, Gas, BP Gulf Disaster.
The earth has had it with all their fooling around.
People won't have to say
No No Keshagesh You can't do that No More
The Earth Will!!
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WindorSolarPlease: I, for one, would have gone already. I don't have many 'allergy' conditions but diesel gets to me fast – can't even be in traffic behind a diesel engine without 'tasting' the oil of it on my tongue.
No NO Keshagesh – You can't do that NO More!!
http://youtu.be/XKmAb1gNN74
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Maggie123
I would have been leaving right there with you.
Sitting in traffic behind a deisel engine is horrible enough.
(no more, no more no more)
Love that song.
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***diesel..oops I typed that wrong..
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Great song first time I heard it. Thanks for posting
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I have to repeat my question:
Are the salt domes in this area concatenated?
If you look on a map, you can see them sitting side by side.
Don't think only about butane, think about WATER…
I think, this is just a beginnig.
Remember first message about this sinkhole?
In the linked video, they're talking about the continental plate.
About fracking. About signs of shifting.
Remember yellowstone?
Have a nice day.
h.
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There's more than a quarter mile of solid salt between the edges of Oxy-Geismer #3 and the butane storage cavern, and the bottom of the butane cavern is above the top of the #3 cavern. In normal situations, that would be plenty of distance between storage caverns. Others in Napoleonville and similar domes are at least that far apart.
Of course, that's assuming neither one is collapsing. For what it's worth, the far (West) side of #3 is closest to the edge of the overall salt dome and is probably the side caving in.
They're probably emptying that cavern anyways. Not that Texas Brine would be worried at all about torching a few trailer-homes in the bayou. I'm sure they just want to avoid paying their storage customer for 'losing' any of their butane.
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Paveway111 – Thanks for detail and distance information, and for assessment of situation comments!!!
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Let's say that there once was a quarter mile of solid salt. Whatever is eroding the salt beneath the dome (such as the fracking sludge Texas Brine dumped into the dome) has probably eaten into a fair portion of it.
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No telling what the did dump in there before plugging it, but where did you see anything about 'fracking sludge' dosdos?
The only reason I would question that isn't because it's out of the question for a driller – it's just too inconvenient to bring anything to Napoleonville. There's nothing to frack in southern La – the oil and gas is all pretty much in sand layers.
They're too cheap to truck spent fracking fluids all the way from Haynesville or Eagle Ford. I'm sure they hide that closer to the source.
There's just not much to frack in the salt basin of Louisiana.
http://8020vision.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/shale_map.png
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The domes themselves come from mile-deep salt layers that underlie the gulf, but are not connected in any mechanical, fault-related or hydraulic sense above those deep salt layers. If Southern Louisiana slides into the Gulf, the domes will go with it.
Location of salt domes on Pg. 6 of this:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lgs.lsu.edu%2Fdeploy%2Fuploads%2F2oilgasfacts.pdf
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@PavewayIII Documents show the Radioactive sludge Texas Brine has stored. DNR records show that on Aug. 31, 1995, the agency authorized Texas Brine to dispose of 20 cubic feet of naturally occurring radioactive material by pumping it into the cavern and another Texas Brine salt cavern in Lafourche Parish.
Louisiana Sinkhole: Radioactive waste in cavern may have exceeded radiation limits — Up to 20 cubic feet pumped inside
http://enenews.com/louisiana-sinkhole-radioactive-waste-in-cavern-may-have-exceeded-radiation-limits-up-to-20-cubic-feet-pumped-inside
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“Bayou Corne now has a growing sinkhole in the ground, radioactive wastes in the water, and traces of potentially explosive butane in the air,” Kaltofen told me . “How much more damage can local residents be expected to suffer.”
[Marco] Kaltofen, a civil engineer and president of Boston Chemical Data Corp., noted that test results posted by the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, show elevated rates of Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material, or NORM, in the liquid sinkhole.
http://enenews.com/expert-concerned-residents-will-be-exposed-to-extremely-dangerous-alpha-radiation-coming-from-sinkhole-radioactive-dust-inhaled-after-carried-by-wind-surface-water
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"…DNR records show that on Aug. 31, 1995, the agency authorized Texas Brine to dispose of 20 cubic feet of naturally occurring radioactive material by pumping it into the cavern…"
So if they did 'dispose' of it in 1995, then its been flushed back out into the bayou by the millions of gallons used to enlarge the same cavern since 1995. Diluting it didn't make it go away either inside or outside the cavern.
I'm not trying to minimize the effect of higher toxin loads in that or any other environment. You just have to consider the damage relative to far more serious toxic loads spewing into the bayou from every solution-mined cavern for the last four decades.
NORM for a solution-mined salt cavern is mostly Radium 224, 226 and 228. Every square inch of salt ever mined in Napoleonville contains those radionuclides. Oxy-Geismer #3 itself must have generated kilos of them. A few tens of grams may have been in the pipe scale and collected into drums, so they had to get a disposal permit. The other few kilos of radium gushed out of their brine discharge pipes 24 hours a day for years.
Now no telling how much of what else Texas Brine might have snuck in the well before plugging it, but – relatively speaking – the few grams of radium permitted in 1995 pales in comparison to what was being sucked out of the salt and dumped into the bayou over the years from one well. There are hundreds in south Louisiana.
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The top of the dome itself is maybe 20 square miles, many moons. Its just the 250' wide cavern on the far west side of it that's the problem.
Texas Brine (actually their lawyers) won't say a thing about the contents. Its not suppose to have anything in it *but* brine. They are suppose to have removed almost all of the diesel fuel used when they were solution mining it. The few barrels of naturally radioactive mineral salts dumped back into the cavern shouldn't even be detectable if they're diluted with millions of gallons of brine already in the cavern.
This brings up the question of what, exactly, is in that cavern right now vs. what they claimed should be in there. The Louisiana DNR and EPA are bought and paid for by the oil and chemical companies in that area. Texas Brine's lawyers probably won't let them say a thing.
As useless as they generally are, I really think its time for the federal government to take over and start some sampling. Texas Brine has had enough time for their TEPCO damage control and cover up.
U.S. taxpayers (= me) are eventually going to get stuck with the bill for resident's relocation and the Napoleonville clean-up, anyway. Time to get someone in there who isn't an industry or Louisiana crony to assess the damage.
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Corporatism introduces Gaia to Kali.
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Sol Man: Very well said! Yes! One imagines they already knew of one another, perhaps are in process of "resolving a situation"? Yikes!
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