Texas Brine blames tremors for cavern failure

It's time for another round of Corporate Ass Covering..  Who to believe?  Geologists and officials from the Department of Natural Resources, or a corporation that would be financially and criminally liable for any present or future damage resulting from their negligence?   SF Gate:

Tremors recorded in Assumption Parish since late May could explain why a brine cavern failed and caused a massive sinkhole that prompted more than 100 evacuations nearby, officials said Tuesday.

That assessment came from the Texas Brine Co., a Houston-based company that plugged and abandoned the cavern in 2011. The company harvests brine — water saturated with salt — which is used in industrial manufacturing.

But officials at the U.S. Geological Survey say the cavern's failure caused the tremors — not the other way around.

Texas Brine Co. spokesman Sonny Cranch said earthquakes recorded near the Napoleonville salt dome two months before the sinkhole appeared could have damaged the abandoned brine cavern. He noted the tremors concentrated around the sinkhole a few days before it rapidly expanded from a few feet of muck to an acre of sludge that swallowed cypress trees.

"The conclusion at this point is that the damage could very well have been caused by seismic activity that's been going on," he said.

Federal officials disagree. William Leith, coordinator of the earthquakes hazards program at USGS, said that the earthquakes are rare in Louisiana and that the vibrations in Assumption Parish did not lead to the cavern's damage or the sinkhole.

"We believe that the tremors are a result of the collapse of the cavern," he said.

Experts brought in by Texas Brine believe the tremors originated thousands of feet away from the face of the dome and at a substantial depth, Cranch said.

Cranch said a tool used to measure the depth of the cavern bottomed out 1,300 feet higher than anticipated. The cavern was last measured when it was abandoned.

Cranch said the presence of the material hit by the tool indicates the cavern failed.

"That material should not have been there. But the debris, the material at the bottom of the cavern does speak to damage," he said.

Parish officials also say they aren't buying the explanation that tremors caused damage to the brine cavern and are waiting for an official explanation from scientists.

"Who's to say the breach in the salt dome didn't cause the seismic activity? It's just questionable. We're not ruling anything out at this point," said Assumption Parish Police Jury spokeswoman Kim Torres.

Louisiana Commissioner of Conservation James Welsh said Texas Brine's "unilateral declaration" that seismic activity breached the cavern was made without consulting state agencies or the Science Work Group that was created to investigate the slurry area. Welsh is requiring Texas Brine to provide all data and analyses to the Office of Conservation.

"Texas Brine has elected to let its own interests guide a premature conclusion lacking sufficient supporting analysis....the investigation and the remediation for environmental damages will be driven by the best science available and carried out to standards set by the state of Louisiana to ensure the safety of the Bayou Corne community — and will not be driven by Texas Brine's timetable or concerns about corporate liability," Welsh said in a statement.

Around 150 homes between the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou communities south of Louisiana Highway 70 South were evacuated after Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency in the parish when it appeared the slurry area was expanding.

Several weeks before the sinkhole emerged, residents had also been reporting natural gas bubbling in nearby waterways. Parish officials say aerial photographs taken Saturday indicate the area is more than 400 feet across and 100 feet wider than it was a month ago.

Cranch said Texas Brine will continue to provide weekly housing assistance checks to the evacuated residents.

Corporations aren't people, but they sure are assholes.

Louisiana sinkhole saltier the deeper it gets

I have no idea what this means.  At least one conspiritard thinks Assumption Parish is sinking into the Gulf.  I'm sure Roland Emmerich would like that, but probably not.  One way or the other, the hole's still getting bigger..  The Examiner.

The giant Louisiana sinkhole’s water is far saltier the deeper the hole gets, state environmental regulators said Monday.


“Salinity estimates based on water samples taken earlier this month from a large sinkhole in northern Assumption Parish suggest the water becomes far saltier, even more than in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the deeper the hole gets, state environmental regulators said Monday,” reports David Mitchell for The Advocate.

Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality officials said those test results are pending might indicate the source of the sinkhole water.

“We should be getting it this week,” Chris Piehler, DEQ Inspection Division administrator said Monday.

The expanding sinkhole is now approximately 427 feet deep, less than 300 feet from the top of Texas Brine's salt cavern that stretches down another 2,800 feet in the Napoleonville Salt Dome. Officials say they expect the sinkhole to continue growing.

It's always something with those Cajuns and their sinking land, right?

Sinkhole Swells; Swallows - Seriously!

Giant Louisiana sinkhole expands to 526-feet and swallows a BOAT (but the two clean-up workers in it were rescued just in time).  Things is not kosher.  Daily Mail. Excerpts:

A ginormous 400-foot deep sinkhole in Louisiana is expanding and today swallowed a boat.


Two clean-up workers who were in the boat had to be rescued before they too disappeared into the watery mass, which today grew by another 50ft, authorities said.

The vessel was tied to a tree on the south west side of the site as the workers cleaned up diesel in the sinkhole.

The piece of land where the tree was standing sunk into the growing pool of water, pulling the boat in with it.


The workers were rescued by air boat and did not suffer any injuries but all clean up operations at the site have now been suspended until further notice due to concerns over safety.
'Early this morning they started the clean up operation of the diesel,' said John Boudreaux, director of Office of Emergency Preparedness for Assumption Parish.

'Two of the workers were in a small John's boat and had a rope skimmer. The boat was tied to trees but that edge slouched and basically the boat started to go in with it. There was an air boat nearby and they were rescued as the trees went in and took the boat in too.'

The gaping hole now measures about 526-feet from northeast to southwest and 640-feet from northwest to southeast.
..
Scientists said at a community meeting last Tuesday the sinkhole might be related to a brine cavern owned by Houston-based Texas Brine Co. contained within an underground salt dome.
It has been reported that local officials at Texas Brine have known since at least January 2011 that there have been problems with the structural integrity of a brine cavern that was plugged in June 2010. Officials did not mention those issues at the meeting.

'It's what I've been saying all along, that they've been hiding things,' Rousseau said. 'I think our local officials are trying to do the best they can, but I think they're being hindered by the higher-ups hiding things.'

Rousseau said he was especially worried after a parish official had him fill out a form asking him to list his next of kin last Thursday morning.

'That's a little disturbing to me. They said it's in case they can't reach us to evacuate. But I mean, come on. They can reach everyone,' he said.

Rep. Joe Harrison, R-Napoleonville, said he wanted more transparency and answers from the Office of Conservation. He said he had no idea about structural issues within the brine cavern until he read about them in the paper.

'There is a serious lack of competence now in the state, and we knew nothing. Nothing. Why did they close the mine? We didn't get any answers. It's a real lack of competence now,' Harrison said.

Hey, Representative Harrison, this is the logical end result of your party's "let corporations regulate themselves" approach.  Hiding potential dangers and obfuscating the actual risks.  Now those abstract dangers have become real and affect your district.  Still feeling the same about gutting the DNR or EPA?

Stuff It Up Your Sinkhole? Sinkhole Shenanigans? Who's NORM?

Even if this sinkhole doesn't hit a nearby butane cave causing a massive explosion, it's already turning into a clusterfuck for the DNR, local authorities, and oil and gas producers.  Turns out, the parish Sheriff's office wasn't told that the sight could be radioactive.  He and his deputies are not amused..

Turns out, Texas Brine and the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources have been holding out on the locals for quite some time now..

Officials upset by lack of salt dome info.  Also from The Advocate.  Those gays are all over this story, yeah?

Assumption Parish leaders reacted angrily Thursday to revelations that Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and Texas Brine Co. LLC officials had known since January 2011 about possible problems at a salt cavern now suspected as a cause of a large sinkhole in the vicinity of the Napoleonville Dome.


Rep. Karen St. Germain, D-Pierre Part; Sheriff Mike Waguespack; Police Jury President Martin “Marty” Triche; and John Boudreaux, director of the parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said they were “upset” and “disturbed” to learn about those problems not directly from DNR, but in a news account Thursday.

“I’m very disappointed in DNR not being up-front,” Waguespack said.

A joint command has been addressing the sinkhole and earlier natural gas releases and tremors that have plagued Bayou Corne residents for more than two months. In that command, parish officials have met regularly with state officials, including those from DNR, to discuss what may be happening.

The parish officials said they did not know until Thursday that the Texas Brine salt cavern had failed an integrity test in late 2010, a development that may have pointed to the cavern breaching the outer wall of the massive Napoleonville Dome.

The sinkhole itself is also just a little bigger than officially reported..  Details of sinkhole’s dimensions emerge: 250% size of earlier reports — One area so deep it exceeded length of measuring rope, nearby ‘bubbling’ — Official: May be ‘rabbit holes’ or cracks in earth

[...]

More details have also emerged about the sinkhole’s dimensions.
The surface of the sinkhole remains 375 feet across, according to the latest measurements, but, DNR officials confirmed, that diameter means the surface area is closer 2.5 acres, larger than earlier reports.

Also, while measurements of the sinkhole’s depth have reached 422 feet, Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality officials said Monday that recent water sampling may point to the hole being far shallower except for a few small areas.

Chris Piehler, DEQ Inspection Division administrator, said most places that a water sampler was dropped for testing recently reached just 50 feet deep. He said that in one small area, he was able to reel out the 300-foot long rope attached to the sampler.
[...]
Piehler said the deeper points may be “rabbit holes” or cracks that reach deeper into the earth than the rest of the sinkhole. He noted that the deepest point was also near where some of the bubbling in the sinkhole is occurring.

NORM.  How much NORM could there be in a one mile by three mile dome, anyway?  More important, even:  How big could the BOOM be?  Possibly Big.  BIG.