Category Archives: Response
New sinkhole outrage: Homeowners are losing insurance
So far about the only thing that hasn’t happened to the beleaguered residents of Louisiana’s Assumption Parish is a plague of locusts. Yet. Since last summer, homeowners in and around the Bayou Corne community, about 70 miles west of New Orleans, have been dealing with the effects of a massive sinkhole. Some 150 families were forced out of their homes in early August, with no indication of when they’ll be [...]
Read More »In Louisiana, we are blessed to have a one-woman environmental protection agency by the name of Bonny Schumaker. A retired NASA physicist and pilot, Schumaker has found a way to merge her love of all creatures and her passion for flying to create an amazing operation called On Wings Of Care. She flies animal rescue missions but since 2010 has also devoted a lot of her energy toward helping her fellow [...]
Read More »The sinkhole in Bayou Corne — the one that I’ve been writing about here since last summer — is getting simply too big to ignore…or so you would think. At latest report, the gaping hole that has swallowed up trees, vegetation and everything else in its wake is now 8.5 acres in size, and experts expect that even in the best-case scenario it will eventually grow to 12 acres. That’s [...]
Read More »Now that we’re more than two years out from the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, a good bit of scientific research is starting to come in. Most of the findings — unfortunately, but predictably — are not good news for the Gulf Coast. Many of these studies are showing that oil has been more damaging to fish or other marine creatures, or to the region’s fragile wetlands, than originally feared. It’s why [...]
Read More »I rarely get a chance to say this, but the feds are on a roll when it comes to the matter of BP. Although I’ve been quite critical over the last two-and-a-half years of the government’s response to the Deepwater Horizon spill, there’s little to criticize in its recent aggressive posture toward the oil giant and its wanton recklessness that killed 11 workers and caused massive environmental damage throughout the [...]
Read More »It was just yesterday that I was sharing with you the new scientific data that even exposure to what has been considered low doses of radiation can be harmful. In particular, I mentioned the long-standing — but not always well-understood — issue of so-called Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material, or NORM. This is a radioactive by-product of the oil-production process; for years it was dumped across the Gulf Coast, polluting groundwater [...]
Read More »We’re beginning to see a pattern with the sinkhole in Bayou Corne, La., the environmental catastrophe that has kept families out of their homes since the summer. Remember, Louisiana regulators have mostly been asleep at the switch on this crisis from Day One. First, the bureaucrats ignored a very specific warning from the owners of the cavern that caused the sinkhole, Texas Brine Co., about significant problems there. Then, they [...]
Read More »If you care about the environment, there’s a good chance you’ve seen the award-winning anti-fracking documentary, Gasland. And if you did, you surely remember the alarming result of natural gas drilling in rural Pennsylvania: People were able to light their tap water with a match! That’s because of dangerous levels of the highly flammable gas methane polluting their wells. In Louisiana, we’ve been warning for months of foul odors and [...]
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