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.

Sinkhole: Now 372 feet diameter, Only 1500 feet from butane-filled cavern

At this rate of growth, we're seven or eight days out from intersection.  Authorities don't know what is even happening, much less how to address stopping it.    The Examiner: 

The initially estimated 200 by 200 feet sinkhole that developed late last week, swallowing ancient cypress trees 100 feet tall near Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou communities in south Louisiana, is now reported to be 380 feet deep with a diameter of 372 feet, filled mainly with salt water with traces of diesel fuel, and only 1,500 feet from a cavern filled with butane, according Tuesday morning news. Analysts' reports further hint that Texas Brine Company's cavern failed, but the butane cavern failing is today's worst-case scenario.


If a nearby butane-filled cavern fails, as it appears the brine cavern did, "it could cause an explosion felt up to two miles away," Fox News 8 reported Tuesday morning. "That's the worst-case scenario."

"All we can tell you right now is we still have bubbling in the bayou and we still don't know what happened and some scientists have pointed out to us that it could go from 200 feet to 2000 feet real quickly. We don't know," said Assumption Parish Sheriff Michael Waguespack on Monday.

After releasing information to the public Monday that the bayou sinkhole is over 380 feet deep, researchers report Tuesday that the diameter of the hole is now 372 feet and has now "swallowed" an acre of the once pristine swampland before oil, gas and salt miners arrived.

Water analysis shows that the water in the sinkhole is comprised mainly of salt water and diesel, both used to stabilize unused salt caverns, officials say.

Some closed salt caverns have diesel fuel at the top as a “pad” to prevent erosion of the salt from the brine, explained John Boudreaux, director of the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Monday's disclosures possibly point to Louisiana Department of Natural Resources officials’ suggestions Friday that the sinkhole was caused by the possibly failed Texas Brine cavern.

“It’s suspect,” Boudreaux said.

Texas Brine company mined deep below the surface for decades but plugged the mine last year by filling it with 20 million barrels of brine, a process that meets the definition of environmental modification, ENMOD.

The company brought geologists from Florida to establish the best way to learn what's going on beneath the surface. Until they know and disclose more about the crisis, homeowners who evacuated might not be able to return, according to Fox News. Residents who did not follow the mandatory evacuation advisory for the area might reconsider. Roughly half of the some 300 people under mandatory evacuation orders remained.

Eventually, sinkholes stop growing.  There is still the possibility that the sinkhole will quit growing before meeting the butane cavern.  That's the best case scenario.  But inertia seems to be indicating otherwise.  More to come..