Tag Archives: texas-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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