TagBayou Corne

Respected general declares war — on the abuses of Big Oil

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There’s been more environmental news than usual in recent weeks, and so it’s been a while since I’ve given readers an update on the giant sinkhole in Bayou Corne, the slow-motion ecological crisis that’s been assaulting the Louisiana bayou for more than 14 months now. That doesn’t mean that the situation is better. To the contrary, some experts say the sinkhole may...

The world finally sees what we’ve been watching in Bayou Corne

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Over the last 12-plus months, I’ve written numerous blog posts about the situation in and around the small Louisiana town of Bayou Corne, where warning signs of earth tremors and methane odors gave way to a sinkhole that eventually grew to the size of the Louisiana Superdome and has kept on growing. One subplot in all my writing about the sinkhole — the result of a salt-dome mining...

It’s going to take years to fix the Louisiana sinkhole

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They had another community meeting about the sinkhole crisis in Bayou Corne last night, and like the swamp itself, passions are boiling over. Residents are frustrated with the loss of their homes for nearly a year now, with the fairly paltry compensation they’ve been getting and with the pace of negotiations with the company responsible for this environmental disaster, Texas Brine Co. Mike...

Sinkhole grows and threatens Bayou Corne

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Last weekend Bonny Schumaker from On Wings of Care — a tireless advocate who’s been our not-so-secret weapon in the war for salvation of the ecology of the Gulf Coast — went up in the skies over Bayou Corne, the small Louisiana town that’s been ravaged by a sinkhole caused by a collapsing sinkhole, an epic tale of neglect. The latest news from there is not good. The...

Justice coming too slowly for beleaguered sinkhole residents

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It’s hard to believe, but with summer upon us we’re also getting closer to the one-year anniversary of the sinkhole fiasco in Bayou Corne. That means that roughly 350 residents of this bayou community 70 miles west of New Orleans have spent months now out of their homes in a forced evacuation, fleeing the smell of methane, an ever-widening hole in the earth that could now accommodate...

Louisiana sinkhole now as large as the Louisiana Superdome

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Last week, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal finally answered the question that had lingered in the humid bayou air for months, when he visited the giant sinkhole around Bayou Corne, about 70 miles west of New Orleans. And he came bearing….well, not exactly gifts but promises that the state would apply the necessary pressure to make sure the owner of the collapsing salt cavern under the ground...

Bayou sinkhole: “This could go on for years”

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After exactly 200 days out of their homes, the beleaguered residents of Bayou Corne finally got a hearing in Baton Rouge this week. They were also told of growing uncertainty about when the crisis in Assumption Parish — where the massive sinkhole created by a collapsing salt cavern continues to grow — will ever be resolved. Many of them want out. Can you blame them at this point? On...

Six months into the sinkhole crisis, Texas Brine decides to see what’s going on down there

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The last time that we visited the sinkhole in Bayou Corne, the situation did not look good. The giant hole on the earth, in the heart of bayou country between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, was getting so big that some experts were predicting that it would soon be nearly big enough to hold the Louisiana Superdome, site of Sunday’s Super Bowl. But it wasn’t just the hole, but the...

They’ll be home for Christmas in Bayou Corne — but only in their dreams

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There can be something magical about Christmas in the Louisiana bayou. But not this year — not in the small community of Bayou Corne, some 70 miles west of New Orleans. Here. some 150 families have been forced out of their homes since the brutally hot dog days of summer, back in August — and they still don’t know when they’re coming back. Efforts to fix the environmental...

What a gas! Flaming faucets as La. sinkhole expands, costs soar

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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...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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