Drowning Cajun Country

[marmar]

from In These Times:


Drowning Cajun Country
Will the eaters of étouffée disappear along with the Louisiana bayou?

BY KENDRA PIERRE-LOUIS


On first glance, the Bayou Corne sinkhole doesn’t look like much. The 32-acre rent in the earth in the thick of Louisiana’s Cajun Country can easily be mistaken for a lake. The only hint of something amiss is a 40-inch-thick empty pipe floating on the water’s surface—and the fact that I must wear a life vest on dry land (although I’m not sure what protection the vest will afford if the ground collapses).

To see the true impact of the sinkhole, one must travel half a mile west to the town of Belle Rose. The streets, like Sauce Picante Lane and Jambalaya Street, stand eerily empty. Most of the town’s 350 inhabitants have fled.

The sinkhole formed after the collapse, two years ago, of a vast underground salt dome mine operated by Texas Brine. Salt domes are injected with fresh water through surface wells—a little-known cousin of fracking—and the resultant brine is pumped to the surface to help transform oil into plastic, leaving a cavern behind. One such cavern, Oxy Geismar No. 3, gave way after it was mined too close to its edge.

When Oxy Geismar No. 3 caved in, it didn’t just create the Bayou Corne sinkhole—it also released fumes from 8,000 barrels of trapped crude oil that were noxious at best, toxic at worst. Texas Brine and the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security found the air quality to be safe, but residents believe it wasn’t monitored quickly enough to know.

Because of the threat of the sinkhole’s expansion, the town is under a mandatory evacuation. But resident Dennis Landry, Cajun by birth, is staying put. His voice thickens as he explains, “If you’re from South Louisiana, you want to live on the river or lake or bayou [the marshy outlet of a lake or river]. … It would be virtually impossible to replace a paradise like this.” .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17450/drowning_cajun_country

[world wide wally]

1. And they will keep voting against themselves until they are all underwater because...

They are against abortion?