Sinkholes and the Caverns that Lurk Beneath the Surface.

Across the United States, and the world at large, there are reports of sinkholes every day. Moreover, ponds and lakes are draining as if someone had pulled the plug of a full bathtub. Most are due to sinkholes, but some "drainings" are not such as the pond-draining that took place in South Carolina this week.

A pond in Blythewood, South Carolina is nothing more than a big mud hole.
Why the water drained from the pond is a mystery.

The water from a pond in Blythewood South Carolina mysteriously drains overnight, leaving a giant smelly six acre mud hole.

Supposedly a wall holding the water gave way, but there is no explanation for the failure. Neighbors reached out to Richland County, DHEC, and the Army Corps. of Emergencies, but because the pond is located on private property, there is nothing anyone can do.

Scott Lake in Florida disappeared overnight in 2006.

In 2006, two to four giant sinkholes swallowed natural, 291-acre Scott Lake in Lakeland, Flroida. The sand revealed by the exposed privately owned lake bottom was riddled with cracks. Under Florida state law, the Florida's Department of Environmental Protection owns the bottom of the lake, thus any fixes would've required its approval.

Today, Scott lake is gradually refilling

A massive sinkhole in western Kansas continues to grow.

On August 2, a monster sinkhole, 200-300 feet wide and 90 feet deep, opened up overnight north of Sharon Springs in Kansas, and swallowed an entire pasture.

Some people have let their curiosity overtake their caution and have hiked down into the cavity, but the sheriff warns that hiking into it is a bad idea because they don’t know what’s under it and if it will further collapse.

Expanding sinkhole in Weaverville NC

Expanding sinkholes, one 35 feet deep and the other 15 feet deep opened up in the parking lot of a shopping center in Weaverville, NC.   For safety reasons, the Arby's there has closed shop. PNC Bank right next door has shut down it's drive-thru lanes, and down just a couple of hundred feet away, KFC's had a (35 foot) sinkhole for two months. KFC is still open for business.

A California subdivision, Lakeside Heights, is being swallowed up by a massive sinkhole.

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Giant and Unprecedented Sinkholes?

The Louisiana Assumption Parish Bayou Corne sinkhole is truly unprecedented globally, according to geologists. It is a living breathing thing that broke the record for breaching and compromising a salt dome to the largest extent know in history, and the 3400 foot deep cavern that caused it is still collapsing. Moreover, this now 15 acre sinkhole is leaking methane gases and crude as it continues to bubble in the bayou. 350 individuals were/are under a mandatory evacuation order, as this monster sinkhole shows no signs of receding. These effected residents began receiving weekly checks in the amount of $875, and now Texas Brine is supposedly preparing to offer settlements to the evacuated residents.,

So, how does an historical event like this escape national media coverage? Better yet, why does the national media ignore this event? Could it be that Texas Brine, an Oil Field Service Company, which provides a broad range of service including Waste Water(Brine) disposal to all major drillers including Halliburton who serves BP, and who once mined this salt cavern, and owns the salt dome, does not want the publicity? Because this was no natural disaster; it was the consequence of mining activities conducted by Texas Brine. It's a well known fact that the media and the authorities have been bought out by the corporations. Take the BP Oil Spill. Facts are still hidden including the oil that has been "cleaned" with lethal Corexit, not to mention, the people suffering from its effects, some, or even many of whom have not survived.

“Bubbles were spotted in Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou in June 2012. Two months later, the ground opened up and left a nine-acre sinkhole. Residents were evacuated and have been for the past seven months. Most affected residents began receiving weekly checks from Texas-Brine in the amount of $875 per week.“

$2 million sinkhole in Washington DC:

Sinkhole in downtown Washington D.C. that continues to block traffic since May 22, 2013

Another view of $2 million sinkhole in Washington D.C.

Sinkhole in NJ warehouse swallows man and forklift:

A forklift operator and his forklift were swallowed by an 8-foot-deep sinkhole (left) 40 feet by 40 feet wide when the floor of the New Jersey warehouse (May 23, 2013) where he was working gave way underneath him. He was rescued and taken to a hospital with back injuries after the fall into the hole in East Rutherford.  The warehouse, which stores nonperishable food, was evacuated after the floor collapsed.

More sinkholes:

May 23, 2013: Sinkhole in Palmer Township, PA , swallows the front of a Lowe's delivery truck.

May 21, 2013 Massive sinkhole kills five in south China town of Shenzhen

May 12, 2013 Giant sinkhole near San Francisco swallows homes as families evacuate

May 2, 2013 Road Collapses in Greene County, Mississippi

April 20, 2013 Roadway Sinkhole Swallows 2 Cars in Vermont

April 18, 2013 A sinkhole swallowed three cars Southeast side of Chicago

Dozens of the sinkholes have appeared at random in recent weeks in Russia:.

April 10, 2013 Giant Sinkhole Swallows Homes in Russia

April 2013

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April 2013

A deep round sinkhole opened up under woman's bed in the middle
of the night in Guatemala City (Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images)

A car juts out of a sinkhole caused by a broken
water main on Dec. 3, 2010 in Chevy Chase, Maryland. (Logan Mock-Bunting/Getty Images)

Car sits in giant sinkhole in Duluth, Minn. Wednesday, June 20, 2011.

Links:

Teenager jumps into a puddle for a $1 bet... and ends up completely submerged in huge water-filled hole (but at least he got a dollar!)

iWitness Pollution Map

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101 Amazing Facts About Planet Earth

101 Earth Facts:


1. What is the hottest place on Earth?

Count one wrong if you guessed Death Valley in California. True enough on many days. But El Azizia in Libya recorded a temperature of 136 degrees Fahrenheit (57.8 Celsius) on Sept. 13, 1922 -- the hottest ever measured. In Death Valley, it got up to 134 Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913.

2. And the coldest place around here?

Far and away, the coldest temperature ever measured on Earth was -129 Fahrenheit (-89 Celsius) at Vostok, Antarctica, on July 21, 1983.

3. What makes thunder?

If you thought, "Lightning!" then hats off to you. But I had a more illuminating answer in mind. The air around a lightning bolt is superheated to about five times the temperature of the Sun. This sudden heating causes the air to expand faster than the speed of sound, which compresses the air and forms a shock wave; we hear it as thunder.

4. Can rocks float?

In a volcanic eruption, the violent separation of gas from lava produces a "frothy" rock called pumice, loaded with gas bubbles. Some of it can float, geologists say. I've never seen this happen, and I'm thankful for that.

5. Can rocks grow?

Yes, but observing the process is less interesting than watching paint dry. Rocks called iron-manganese crusts grow on mountains under the sea. The crusts precipitate material slowly from seawater, growing about 1 millimeter every million years. Your fingernails grow about the same amount every two weeks.

6. How much space dust falls to Earth each year?

Estimates vary, but the USGS says at least 1,000 million grams, or roughly 1,000 tons of material enters the atmosphere every year and makes its way to Earths surface. One group of scientists claims microbes rain down from space, too, and that extraterrestrial organisms are responsible for flu epidemics. There's been no proof of this, and I'm not holding my breath.

7. How far does regular dust blow in the wind?

A 1999 study showed that African dust finds its way to Florida and can help push parts of the state over the prescribed air quality limit for particulate matter set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The dust is kicked up by high winds in North Africa and carried as high as 20,000 feet (6,100 meters), where it's caught up in the trade winds and carried across the sea. Dust from China makes its way to North America, too.

8. Where is the worlds highest waterfall?

The water of Angel Falls in Venezuela drops 3,212 feet (979 meters).

9. What two great American cities are destined to merge?

The San Andreas fault, which runs north-south, is slipping at a rate of about 2 inches (5 centimeters) per year, causing Los Angeles to move towards San Francisco. Scientists forecast LA will be a suburb of the City by the Bay in about 15 million years.

10. Is Earth a sphere?

Because the planet rotates and is more flexible than you might imagine, it bulges at the midsection, creating a sort of pumpkin shape. The bulge was lessening for centuries but now, suddenly, it is growing, a recent study showed. Accelerated melting of Earth's glaciers is taking the blame for the gain in equatorial girth.

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Six Planet Earths To Sustain if Everyone Lived Like the Average American Family

"If everyone in the world consumed like the average American, we'd need about six Earths to sustain ourselves."

Considering Americans consume 26% of the world's energy but only make up 4% of the world population, this situation could become reality sooner than we think. By 2050 it is estimated that India will have surpassed China in population and India and China will account for half of the world's inhabitants and more than likely will adopt the same consumer habits only a mere 4% practice now.

Knowing this, I can understand why we must continue to subsidize agriculture even though it only accounts for nine-tenths of one percent of G.D.P. and farmers only make up seven-tenths of one percent of our labor force. Historically, one of the main reasons to keep the majority of people in poverty has been in order to maintain political power because those in power know that is the only way to maintain, what to most in the developing world, would probably consider a very greedy lifestyle.

"To satisfy all the world’s sanitation and food requirements would cost only $13 billion, hardly as much as the people of the United States and the European Union spend each year on perfume". -- Ignacio Ramonet,

Luckily, for us, two billion people in the world are without electricity and many more live without running water and/or adequate food supply.

The head of the US State Department planning staff until 1950 made this very clear when he said the following,

"We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population.…In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.…To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.…We should cease to talk about vague and… unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

We should recognize that our influence in the Far Eastern area in the coming period is going to be primarily military and economic. We should make a careful study to see what parts of the Pacific and Far Eastern world are absolutely vital to our security, and we should concentrate our policy on seeing to it that those areas remain in hands which we can control or rely on."

— George Kennan,

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Wiser Earth.

WiserEarth is an interactive database whose goal it is to list, categorize, and describe every non-profit and civil society organization on Earth such as climate change, poverty, the environment, peace, water, hunger, social justice, conservation, human rights, and more. Content is created by people like you from around the world. It currently includes 104,304 organizations which can be viewed by name, location, or category. You can post (or search) jobs, events, and resources; you can discuss; you can visualize the networks connecting specific categories and the various organizations.

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