Tag Archives: brine

Town Overrun by 31-Acre Sinkhole Now Overrun by Homeless Kittens

by LatoyaHuxley Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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In August of 2012, a salt cavern maintained by the mining company Texas Brine collapsed, creating a sinkhole outside the town of Bayou Corne, Louisiana, and prompting a mandatory evacuation order that has yet to be lifted. Two and a half years later, the sinkhole has grown to 31 acres, Texas Brine has reached a $48.6 million settlement with displaced homeowners, and the company is considering bulldozing much of the town and converting it into “green space.”

But it’s not just Bayou Corne evacuees who are looking for a new place to live—the neighborhood near the sinkhole is still home to 38 feral cats, who risk losing their suburban habitat if the properties return to nature because of the sinkhole.

The New Orleans Times Picayune has the full story on the kittens of Bayou Corne, and the efforts of one of the few remaining residents, Teleca Donachricha, to find them a home:

Some of the residents had been feeding different groups of them, but those residents are all gone now. One woman had been trying to drive the hour from Baton Rouge every other day to feed one group of the cats, but Donachricha knew that wasn’t going to last long. She said if the woman could provide food, she would feed the cats for her, and she has.

…

Texas Brine spokesman Sonny Cranch said he couldn’t say when demolition will occur. The company donated $1,000 to a nonprofit Donachricha was working with to get some of the cats spayed and neutered. All but three of the 38 cats are now spayed or neutered — one of the remaining ones is a newer arrival that was recently dumped there, and the other two she hasn’t been able to catch.

“We support her efforts,” Cranch said. “Hopefully she’ll be successful in finding homes for these animals.”

Any takers?

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Post by The Feral Cats Of Bayou Corne, Louisiana.

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Town Overrun by 31-Acre Sinkhole Now Overrun by Homeless Kittens

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Residents Displaced by Massive Sinkhole Reach $48 Million Settlement With Mining Company

by WallyValliere Posted on April 9, 2014

Mother Jones

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Twenty months after a 30-acre sinkhole opened up in the swamp behind their community, Bayou Corne, Louisiana, residents reached a $48 million settlement with the salt-mining company Texas Brine. Geologists say the company’s collapsed storage caverns likely triggered the environmental catastrophe and the series of small earthquakes that accompanied it. The class-action lawsuit, filed by the 90 homeowners who hadn’t taken buyout offers from the company, was scheduled to go to trial next week. Residents of the community of 300 have been under a mandatory evacuation order since August of 2012 over fears that explosive-level gases might collect under their homes—although some residents have installed air monitors in an effort to wait it out.

Per the Baton Rouge Advocate:

“We firmly believe the $48 million is a really good settlement number,” said Larry Centola, one of the attorney’s representing the owners and residents of about 90 homes and camps in the Bayou Corne area.

…

The settlement comes a few weeks after Texas Brine closed on the last of the 66 direct, out-of-court property buyouts and appears to provide a path toward conclusion for another wave of Bayou Corne residents displaced by the sinkhole disaster now more than 20 months old.

As I reported in a story for the magazine last year, the sinkhole has confounded geologists and state regulators, who previously believed that it was impossible for an underground salt cavern like the one underneath Bayou Corne—and used for natural gas storage by energy companies all over the Gulf Coast—to collapse from the side. But that’s what happened. In the meantime, residents have been left to wonder if their community will meet the same fate as the town next door, Grand Bayou, which was evacuated and reduced to empty slabs after a natural gas leak a decade earlier.

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Residents Displaced by Massive Sinkhole Reach $48 Million Settlement With Mining Company

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Yes, You Can (And Should!) Reuse Pickle Juice

by iscciaglewstrone123 Posted on October 19, 2013

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Yes, You Can (And Should!) Reuse Pickle Juice

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Giant, oil-belching sinkhole dooms more than 100 homes in Louisiana

by Larry Daichea Posted on June 26, 2013

Giant, oil-belching sinkhole dooms more than 100 homes in Louisiana

By John Upton

It’s looking like a neighborhood in Assumption Parish, La., has been permanently wiped out by a sloppy salt-mining company.

A sinkhole in the area has grown to 15 acres since an old salt mine that was emptied to supply the local petrochemical industry with brine began collapsing in August. Hundreds of neighbors were long ago evacuated, and many of them are now accepting that they will never return to their homes.

The sinkhole isn’t just endangering homes, it is also burping out oil, natural gas, and debris, shaking the area so powerfully that seismic equipment is being used to monitor the site. And brine from the sinkhole is in danger of contaminating local waterways. This thing is so big it even has its own Facebook page.

On Wings of Care

This is not a lake. It’s part of the 15-acre sinkhole in Assumption Parish.

By Monday, the company responsible for the disaster, Texas Brine, had reached agreements to buy up the homes of 44 affected households, but dozens more are still negotiating or have filed suit against the company. From the Baton Rouge Advocate:

“While not every resident chose to participate in the settlement process, Texas Brine has been committed to offering reasonable offers to those residents who decided they wanted to move from the area and voluntarily participated in the settlement process,” [Texas Brine spokesman Sonny] Cranch said.

But not everybody thinks the offers are reasonable.

“Me and my wife worked for the last 10 years to get where we are,” Jarred Breaux said at his home Tuesday afternoon. “Do you feel like starting over?”

He said Texas Brine’s offer just wasn’t enough for him to pick up his family and leave his home, but he would be interested in extended discussions and participating in mediation with Texas Brine.

“I know we’ve got a big decision (to make) pretty soon,” said Breaux, who doesn’t have an attorney but said he likely will look for one soon.

This is not the first such trouble triggered by a former brine mine, but it caught the attention of Louisiana lawmakers. From a report earlier this month in the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Gov. Bobby Jindal [on] Friday signed a slew of bills tightening regulations for underground cavern operators and written in response to a debris-filled sinkhole in the swamps of Assumption Parish. …

“These laws will ensure that companies are acting in good faith and upholding public safety. It’s critical that we hold companies accountable when they put communities at risk and these new laws will help achieve that goal,” Jindal said in a statement.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Giant, oil-belching sinkhole dooms more than 100 homes in Louisiana

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Massive Louisiana sinkhole caused by oil industry just keeps on growing

by Isaiah McKenna Posted on March 20, 2013

Massive Louisiana sinkhole caused by oil industry just keeps on growing

By John Upton

On Wings of Care

The oil-sheen-coated sinkhole, photographed over the weekend by nonprofit On Wings of Care. 

A sinkhole triggered in Louisiana by the fossil fuel industry grew to 12 acres over the weekend, and it appears that hundreds of displaced nearby residents will never be able to return to their homes.

The sinkhole has been growing since it appeared in August. It was caused by a salt mining operation that sucked brine out from beneath the Assumption Parish marsh and piped it to nearby petrochemical facilities. Houston-based Texas Brine had apparently excavated too close to the surface, and officials are worried that a similar fate could befall another Texas Brine salt mining site nearby.

Salt is used by the oil industry to stabilize the earth around drilled wells. Emptied salt domes are also used to store oil, gas, and other petrochemicals.

Natural gas is belching out of the sinkhole and the waters that have filled it are covered with a rainbow slick of oil. Officials are burning the gas as it escapes to try to prevent an explosion.

From the Daily Comet:

About 350 people living in the area have been under an evacuation order and many of them displaced for more than seven months, with no end in sight. Texas Brine officials said they were beginning to contact residents Monday to discuss buyouts and settlement offers for the 150 homes.

After months of silence on the issue, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) recently began discussing it at press conferences, and last night he met privately with affected residents. From The Times-Picayune:

Jindal, who met with the residents of Bayou Corne in a closed-door meeting around 2 p.m., … re-emphasized Texas Brine Co. LLC will be offering voluntary buyouts to locals looking to move on with their lives.

“Texas Brine is responsible for the sinkhole. We’ve been committed to holding them accountable. After months of discussions, after meeting with them last week, the company has finally agreed to start this process,” Jindal said.

The sinkhole has triggered fresh concerns about the practice of salt mining in Louisiana, where similar accidents have happened in the past. Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal recounted a 1980 accident for KATC:

November 20, 1980 is a day Sheriff Louis Ackal will never forget. He was Captain of Louisiana State Police Troop-I when a miscalculation sent an oil rig’s drill directly into the salt mine instead of under the lake, collapsing the Jefferson Salt Mine.

“There was just swirls of mud, giant oak trees were being sucked down like a hand pulling them into the mud,” said Ackal.

Ackal is worried a similar accident could play out at another salt-mine project in the state, where AGL Resources wants to expand natural-gas storage caverns under Lake Peigneur:

Ackal is urging Governor Bobby Jindal to intervene. He wants proof the dome is safe, and wants answers to why bubbling happens sporadically.

“Whatever monies it is paying the State of Louisiana to use that dome is not worth a damn penny of it if it’s going to endanger the lives and property of the people that live out there,” said Ackal.

Maybe one day the gas and oil industry will learn from past mistakes. But not today.

This video shows the Assumption Parish sinkhole and surrounding homes. It was filmed from a light airplane over the weekend by nonprofit On Wings of Care:

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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