Is Louisiana Sinkhole Transforming Area Into a Liquefied Wasteland.?

See video below for a tour of above picture

Here is the latest on the Louisiana sinkhole (above):

On July 14, 2013, an Assumption Parish official, John Boudreaux, says the deepest part--picture an upside down witch's hat--of the dangerous gas-emitting  22-acre sinkhole near Bayou Corne is not what Texas Brine previously reported: 110-220 feet, but, at the very least, 500 feet deep. It could even, and most probably is, much deeper. 

“An Assumption Parish official says the deepest part of the 22-acre sinkhole near Bayou Corne is at least 500 feet deep, and not between 110 to 220 feet deep that has been estimated by Texas Brine.

John Boudreaux, director of the Assumption Parish Office of Homeland Security, said previous depth reports released by Texas Brine Co. may have been inaccurate because the company’s sonar did not penetrate debris fields inside the sinkhole.

The swampland hole emerged last August after a Texas Brine salt dome cavern failed deep underground. That failure forced the evacuation of 350 residents for almost a year.

Texas Brine spokesman Sonny Cranch said Sunday he is confident the company’s depth findings are correct. A Texas Brine contractor has said the sinkhole is from 110 feet to 220 feet deep, according to previous monthly depth-finding surveys.

The most recent sonar test on June 7 found the depth of the sinkhole to be 140 feet deep.

Boudreaux likened the bottom of the sinkhole to a swimming pool with the deepest part located in the middle.

Boudreaux said he did not use a sophisticated method like sonar to measure the sinkhole. Instead, he said, he took a 10-pound crowbar with the ends cut off and attached it to a 500-foot surveyor’s tape measure, drove out to the center of the sinkhole in an amphibious vehicle and let the crowbar go, unspooling the tape measure until it could not go any further.

“It’s the simplest of the simple,” Boudreaux said of the device.

He performs these checks periodically to confirm the numbers Texas Brine is finding using sonar testing.

Boudreaux said he took six other measurements and found the floor in other areas to be between 125 and 180 feet before he found what he described as an “upside-down witches hat,” a deep cone with a pointed end.

He said there is debris, including trees, in the sinkhole and the sonar Texas Brine is using is bouncing off the debris, leading officials to find a false bottom.

Moreover, a 1600 square foot chunk of land  fell  into the Louisiana sinkhole abyss (see video below), and due to all of the methane pressures Bayou Corne is expressing, minor explosions abound, not to mention, fish are dying right and left.



Tour of the Louisiana Bayou Corne Sinkhole site:



Links:

Off-Shore Pipeline Info: Who Owns What.
It lists everything out in the gulf and who owns it.

Below Sinkhole: 500 billion cubic feet of gas, 200 million gallons of oil estimated in Napoleonville Salt Dome

Sinkhole: Napoleonville Salt Dome Project hydrocarbon survey was over 50 square miles — Reported size of 1 mile by 3 miles only includes top of dome

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BP Genocide?

Gulf of Mexico dead zone

The impact of the BP Oil spill, made much worse by the toxic dispersal agent Corexit 9500 -  originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by the Nalco Holding Company, which is 11 times more toxic than oil - is continuing to destroy lives, at a greater rate than before, yet, we hear almost nothing about it from the mainstream media.

According to four university studies, 79% of the oil is still there; however, as much of a problem as that poses, it's the toxic chemical dispersant  that is destroying the physical health of countless Gulf residents, not to mention, non Gulf residents.

People are sick...very, very sick.  Some have even died.  Eyewitness and personal accounts of scabs, lesions, skin rashes, and internal bleeding from every orifice including coughing up blood, nose bleeds, and rectal bleeding are reported all throughout the Gulf region. Because Corexit literally destroys red blood cells. The surfactants, which are the primary ingredient in Corexit destroy cell membranes.

"Oil rain"

Evaporation proceeds more quickly at higher temperatures. So, unlike the frigid water temperatures that the Exxon Valdez tanker dumped 11 million gallons of crude, the much warmer Gulf of Mexico waters will allow the “phase transition” of liquid to a gaseous state where it is then absorbed into clouds, and then released as “toxic rain”, potentially upon all of Eastern North America.

NASA conducted studies of the atmosphere and found a millimeter of oil over the Gulf, something they had never seen before. Robert Naman, president of Act Laboratory Inc in Mobile, AL, is one of the many people testing swimming pools and finding Corexit 957. Swimmers are developing rashes, vomiting, diarrea, low-grade fevers, and other flu-like symptoms as Corexit goes right through skin.

Barbara Schebler of Homosassa, Florida, just one hour north of Tampa, received word that test results on the water from her family’s swimming pool showed 50.3 ppm of 2-butoxyethanol, a marker for the dispersant Corexit 9527A used to break up and sink BP’s oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

From a scientist at the center of the spill:

The dispersant works as follows: The oil mixes with the dispersant and forms into tiny microdroplets of oil. These microdroplets have the same specific gravity as the water, so they just kind of hang suspended in the water. On the surface, this helps to break up the oil.

But in the deep sea, this prevents the oil from rising to the surface as quickly. The oil just hangs suspended in the depths, and is moved by the deep-sea currents.

In the history of oil spills before this one, dispersants had only been used on the surface. So this is the first time ever that dispersants have been used subsurface.
You also have to consider that in the deep sea there are hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch; and it’s very cold, maybe one or two degrees Celsius; and there’s no sunlight to break down the dispersants—there is no sunlight below about 1,000 meters. All of those factors mean even more that the oil down there, when mixed with dispersant, will not rise to the surface for a long time.

Unfortunately we can’t measure the true impact of the spill if most of the oil is below the surface.

Are you saying that if the dispersants had not been applied at the well-head, then most or all of the oil would rise to the surface and these underwater plumes would basically not exist?

For the most part, yes. Or at least, the underwater plumes would be far shorter-lived since they would be rising to the surface.

If we had avoided the deep sea use of dispersants, and had simply let all of the oil rise to the surface or just below the surface, the situation would be much less catastrophic: We know how to deal with oil at the surface. We have precedent for that: We can skim it, we can burn it.

On the other hand, we cannot treat oil in the depths of the sea. There is no precedent. We don’t know how to do it. And as of now there is no plan to even try.

The trade-off was made between two fragile habitats: the marsh/freshwater habitat, and the deep-sea habitat of the Gulf of Mexico.

The marsh/freshwater habitat on the coast is very visible to the public, and of course a disaster there is also a PR disaster for the company that caused it.

The deep-sea habitat is largely unknown and certainly unseen. So in a sense, it is out of sight, out of mind. BP attempted to save the marsh/freshwater habitat at the expense of the deep-sea habitat.

But even with use of dispersants at the well-head, still a lot of oil is rising to the surface and is now making its way into the marsh/freshwater habitat—hence all the oil-covered fish, birds, and other creatures that are making the news.

So, instead of one habitat being saved at the expense of the other, effectively both habitats have been ruined.

Links:

Changing the end game

Gulf Chemist: BP Contractors Are Now Applying Toxic Dispersant - at Night and In an Uncontrolled Manner - Which BP Says It No Longer Uses

Statement from Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery Attorney Stuart Smith


Gulf oil spill harming children's health

Gulf Coast Barefoot Doctors

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Fukushima: What's Really Going On?

If you listen to the mainstream media, regarding anything, really, you will probably hear what you want to hear: everything will be fine as long as you listen to us, but, everything will not be fine, especially if you listen to them. If you don't think so,  research the 9/11 workers who are sick, dying or dead.  Research the  Gulf Coast residents and workers, that nearly a year after the oil disaster began,are sick, and dying from BP’s toxic chemicals.  Where was/is the mainstream media?

Take "safe levels of radiation", or event better, “at levels far below the levels that would pose a risk to humans” that self-interested parties like to claim, exist, without putting it into context.

"We all get between 1 to 10 millisieverts a year - an average 2 to 3 millisieverts - from background radiation," says Burns.

Air travel and CT scans are other common sources.

Official limits for radiation in food and water are set in the context of such exposures.

For example, the limit for nuclear workers is much higher than for the general public.

Ruff says it's important to remember radiation limits like this are not levels below which there is no effect.

"They're just a practical compromise between what's achievable and what's deemed an acceptable risk," he says.

Ruff says it's also important to remember the impact of radiation is greater on the unborn, infants and children, especially girls, compared to adults.

Now, Physicians for Social Responsibility say there are no safe thresholds for radiation.  However, once again, that means little without putting it into some sort of context.  Nevertheless, you can be sure of one thing.  Governments lie cover up. They always have and they always will...especially when profit is at stake. Moreover, every single government that has ever had a radiation problem covered up the extent of the danger.

There are no warning signs anywhere along the coast. People walk on this shoreline with their dogs and children. The dogs take the contaminated mud back home on their hair. The children carry it on their shoes. It then dries and can be breathed in. The deeper you dig down into the mud, the more poisonous the levels become because of the accumulation of waste over the years.

Fortunately, for us, we have the Internet, and the technology available to check them out. Unfortunately, the news is not good.

More signs of serious radiation contamination in and near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were detected Thursday, with the latest data finding groundwater containing radioactive iodine 10,000 times the legal threshold and the concentration of radioactive iodine-131 in nearby seawater rising to the highest level yet.

It appears that the core of No. 2 reactor - the one that Dr. Chris Busby said has a 5% of creating a nuclear explosion - "has melted through the bottom of the pressure vessel and at least some of it is down on the concrete floor beneath".

One nuclear expert warned that it might be another 100 years before melting fuel rods can be safely removed.

Anaheim California registered highest radiation in US

Drifting radiation:



The following video took place in Stockholm, April 22, 2009. The recently resigned Scientific Secretary of the ICRP, Dr Jack Valentin (icrp.org), concedes to Pr. Chris Busby, ECRR (euradcom.org) , that the ICRP model cannot be used to predict the health effects of exposures and that for certain internal exposures it is insecure by up to two orders of magnitude. He also said that as he was no longer employed by ICRP he could agree that the ICRP and the United Nations committee on radiation protection (UNSCEAR) had been wrong in not examining the evidence from the Chernobyl accident, and other evidence outlined below, which shows large errors in the ICRP risk model.



Pr. Chris Busby, ECRR, versus Dr. Jack Valentin , ICRP, 1(2) from Radio Active on Vimeo.

Links:

The Low Level Radiation Campaign

European on Radiation Risk

Fallujah study finds epidemiological consequences worse than Hiroshima

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What does BP stand for?

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has published documents relating to its hearings into the Deepwater Horizon accident and subsequent oil leak, and what should come as a surprise to no one,  BP made a series of money-saving shortcuts and blunders that dramatically increased the danger of a destructive oil spill in a well that an engineer ominously described as a "nightmare" just six days before the blowout.

Congress wrote a letter to Tony Hayward outlining its concerns that BP took shortcuts and undertook risky practices, in an attempt to keep costs down. This letter was written in preparation for Hayward's testimony on Thursday of this week.

Worse yet, oil and gas industry insider, Matt Simmons has been warning that the scale of the spill is much bigger and that there's a larger leak several miles away.  He also thinks that sealing the gush of oil might very well entail  "what the Soviet Union did decades ago -- setting off a bomb deep underground so that the fiery blast will melt the surrounding rock and shut off the spill."

Despite BP's egregious history and continuance of corporate criminality -  in addition to its behavior before and after the the Deepwater Horizon oil spill - BP, which stands for Beyond Prosecution

"...the Justice Department (DOJ) abruptly shut down West's investigation into BP in August 2007 and gave the company a "slap on the wrist" for what he says were serious environmental crimes that should have sent some BP executives to jail."

and will no doubt avoid the harsh consequences it deserves, as BP stands for  Bankruptcy Protection.

They have about a month before they declare Chapter 11. They're going to run out of cash from lawsuits, cleanup and other expenses. One really smart thing that Obama did was about three weeks ago he forced BP CEO Tony Hayward to put in writing that BP would pay for every dollar of the cleanup. But there isn't enough money in the world to clean up the Gulf of Mexico. Once BP realizes the extent of this my guess is that they'll panic and go into Chapter 11. -- Matt Simmons

Meanwhile, T. Boone Pickens, Rand Paul, and  Mike Bloomberg think we're being too hard on BP.

On his weekly radio show, the mayor of New York said, "The guy who runs BP didn't exactly go down there and blow up the well."

No, he didn't "go down there"...he didn't have to "go down there." Remote control is just as effective.

In other news, over the weekend, oil spilled once more.  21,000 gallons from a Chevron pipeline leaked into the Red Butte River which runs through the center of Salt Lake City.

Chevron is expected to unveil a cleanup plan this morning, after a day in which the company focused on containing an oil leak that fouled Red Butte Creek and Liberty Park pond, in hopes of keeping the toxic spill from reaching the Great Salt Lake.

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Oil Disaster: If It Were My Home

See all 8 photos: Caught in Oil

A bird (left) is mired in oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

As the BP Oil gush makes its way to land, the effects are becoming much more evident. It's bad enough when innocent birds and animals are injured due to either accidental events or acts of nature, however, it's beyond heartbreaking to watch as the Gulf's seabirds and creatures suffer due to an event brought on by human greed, negligence, and if you ask me, downright evil.

At the website Ifitwasmyhome you can visualize the BP oil spill disaster and move it anywhere you want in the world and then move it back again.

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Remember Who Authored this Tragic Script..

As NPR's  Chris Satullo   so eloquently authored and voices in A driller's lament, President Obama is not the "author of this tragedy".

Most of us can agree, I'd imagine, that the Obama administration has made a political hash out of the Gulf oil spill.

The president hasn't nailed either half of the required theatrics: the righteous rage toward BP and the rest, of the Clintonesque quivering lip that shows he feels the Gulf Coast's pain.

But we do understand a few things, don't we? The latest Gallup Poll suggests that many of us do. Such as:

The inability to stem the leak is a technical issue, not one of political will. It is a failure of engineering know-how, not leadership.

It's not that people aren't trying to stop the oil from gushing. They've tried everything they could think of, and nothing worked.

And that's the scary thing.

Which drives you back to deeper points. What in the world were we doing letting corporations drill this deep if we couldn't curb the damage should something go wrong? And why let corporations follow their own judgment when it comes to keeping things from going terribly wrong?

Those mistakes date back to long before the current president.

Some people now deem it very bad form to point out that any current calamity is very significantly the fault of George W. Bush. Of course, many of the people who say that have spent the last 40 years blaming everything that goes wrong in America on a couple of Supreme Court decisions and a few hairy protesters back in the 60s.

Fact is, we do have political parties in this country, and they are different.

Only one party has made a national project out of limiting rules on business and defanging the agencies that enforce those rules. Only one party chants Drill, Baby, Drill!

As you may have heard, the agency that was supposed to help prevent calamities like the spill is a mess, a watchdog put to sleep by bribes as cheap as tickets to a football game.

Ask yourself: Which president was himself a driller, who made it his agenda to to put industry executives in charge of the agencies that regulate industry?

Hint, it wasn't Barack Obama. It was that guy before him.

Just thought I'd mention that before we all swallow hole the emerging media theme that the spill is Obama's Katrina.

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Ain't it Obvious? We Can't Trust BP to Do the Job.

BP's only interest is the bottom line. From no plans in case of a disaster, to its audacious short-cuts throughout the entire process, judge shopping, and the outright lies BP has told since the beginning, this company is useless and good for nothing, except maybe for its lobbying talents. 

Greed is the essential component in the formula for disaster. Why? Because ultimately, greed leads to negligence, incompetence and most of all bold faced lies, which, thanks to Rachel Maddow, is eloquently demonstrated in a segment of "The Rachel Maddow Show"(video below).

So, it follows that when the only incentive given to each player is individual profit,  (huge windfall profits) the incentives of the company will never align with the needs of public safety...or the public good.

It's very clear. Mad dashes for profit and perverse incentive structures = disaster.

BP is one of the biggest spenders on lobbying in the oil and gas industry to represent its interests in Washington.

During the first quarter of 2010, it spent $3.5 million on lobbying, second only to ConocoPhillips, according to figures compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Yet despite the far from resolved Gulf Oil disaster and as plenty of evidence suggests, BP's responsibility, they want to avoid curbs on new drilling, according to  its lobbyists.

BP officials, who put profits above all else, including safety, wanted to proceed quickly as possible in order to save money on the current well's cost, and  so they could begin on another well, which was behind schedule.

Lies and more lies.

BP, Government Risk Larger Spill to Stem Leak

BP CEO disputes claims of underwater oil plumes.

BP Lowballing Oil Flow

BP is vastly understating the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf in order to decrease fines, which are based on the number of barrels leaked per day. Host Scott Simon talks with Markey about his criticism of the oil company and its efforts to contain the oil spreading in the Gulf of Mexico.

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Ensuring Change Takes Place This Time Around.

31-years ago, on June 13, 1979, while the Trans-Alaskan oil pipeline (right) -  technically 800 miles of pipleline with a diameter of 48 inches that crosses three mountain ranges and over 800 rivers and streams, that connects oil fields in northern Alaska to a sea port where the oil can be shipped to the lower 48 states for refining - was in a state of "repair" (continuous)  from the previous oil leak(s) that allowed 1500 barrels of crude oil to escape, the Gulf of Mexico was trying to handle a much larger oil spil(June 3, 1979) that dumped 30,000 barrels of crude per day into the Gulf.

Sound familiar?  Well, that's not all. The techniques used to contain the 1979 spill are all too familiar to us today, and on August 7, 1979, reports of oil containment workers were still dominating the news. Then, on n August 8, 1979, reports of that all too familiar loop current, that we hear so much about today. On September 25, 1979, it was reported that "Operation Sombrero" that tried to put a 300 ton steel cone over the mouth of the runaway well, that once in place will collect over 90% of the crude oil, gushing from the well for over 3.5 months. BP's "Top Hat", anyone?  Yes, they even tried their own brand of "Top Kill", and pretty much every other technique we see trying and... failing today.

And the best part? All of these failed techniques used over thirty years ago, failed in 200 feet of water! What in the hell has possessed the minds of these over-the-top, highly paid, oil-drilling "experts" that makes them think these failed techniques will work at a depth of 5,000 feet?  Could it be "royalty breaks of $1 billion over five years" that is drying up the brains of these high-paid executives? Royalty Tweaks Target Deep Reserves?

Well, as we've seen in the banking industry, "royalty increases" greed can drain the capacity for all forms of high level cognitive activity in even the most brilliant of minds.  And therein lies the problem. It's all well and good to develop oil and gas resources, even when they are the most costly to develop and access, if they will more than likely pay off to line the pockets of those in charge.

Anyway, the 1979 "historical" oil spill continued for nine months, until relief wells were created to relieve pressure on the blown-out well, so that eventually it could be capped.




In the end, the only way to ensure change takes place is if we are willing to raise our standards of what we deem acceptable. If we contiue to allow personal gain to trump all else, things will never change...ever.

Thanks to Rachel Maddow's fabulous report on how much oil disasters and oil disaster response has not changed one iota in over 30 years.

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