Mining Madness: 750-Foot-Deep Sinkhole Swallows Louisiana Town

ORIGINAL: Take Part
Douglas Main

August 22, 2013

The 24-acre cavity was caused by the collapse of an underground salt dome.

No, this is not a lake. (Photo: Strange Sounds)

It began with bubbles. Bubbles of gas throughout the bayou. Nothing to get hysterical about. But it kept getting worse.

So residents of Bayou Corne, Louisiana, turned to state regulators, who in the summer of 2012 determined that it wasn't naturally occurring swamp gas, according to Mother Jones. And the U.S. Geological Survey also found that there was increased seismic activity.

What could it be? With bubbling getting worse, the suggestion was floated that it could be the beginnings of a sinkhole, perhaps caused by the mining of a salt dome beneath the town. The company in charge of the mining, Texas Brine, told state officials a sinkhole was highly unlikely.

Then, on August 3, 2012, crude oil began gushing out of a gaping pit nearby. That afternoon, governor Bobby Jindal ordered residents of the small town to evacuate.

Texas Brine drilled a relief well, only to find that the wall of the salt dome, which they were mining, had collapsed. "The breach allowed sediment to pour into the cavern, creating a seam through which oil and explosive gases were forced up to the surface," Mother Jones noted. It was previously thought that it was impossible for salt domes to collapse from the side in this manner, illustrating a lack of knowledge about the geology of these formations and the effects of mining them.

Today, the sinkhole in Bayou Corne covers 24 acres and is 750 feet deep—and keeps growing, according to news reports. Many of the town's residents have evacuated, while some have defied the order and remained. Earlier this month, the state of Louisiana sued Texas Brine LLC for environmental damages, according to the Times-Picayune.

9 Terrifying Sinkholes

Booms have been put in place to protect the surrounding wetlands from oil release. But much damage has already been done, and the state of Louisiana's suit alleges the company didn't and hasn't done enough to correct the problem, according to the Associated Press.

The incident is one of the unforeseen effects of a rise in "injection" mining in southern Louisiana, and throughout the South.

Bayou Corne's sinkhole was caused by this kind of mining, according to Louisiana state officials. In injection mining, water is injected into salt domes deep underneath the ground's surface. The resulting salt water is then brought up and evaporated, where it can yield products like sodium hydroxide, or lye, used in the manufacture of many products, according to Mother Jones. The empty caverns that this practice creates may also then be filled with other materials, like wastewater or even radioactive materials.

Petrochemical companies, many of which use injection mining, are amongst the biggest employers in Louisiana.

The U.S. Geological Survey notes that sinkholes are common in areas where the underlying rock is limestone, salt or carbonate rock, and circulating water is present to hollow out holes. But recent examples in the South show mining may cause these incidents. In 1954, one brine cavern in Bayou Choctaw, near Baton Rouge, collapsed, birthing a lake 820 feet wide. In 2008, another sinkhole appeared virtually overnight, reaching a width of 600 feet and a depth of 150 feet, according to the New York Times. This one, dubbed "Sinkhole de Mayo," may have been caused by the injection of saltwater wastes into empty wells within salt domes.

Perhaps the most spectacular and tragic sinkholes happened in November 1980 in Louisiana's Lake Peigneur. In that case, operators miscalculated where they were drilling, piercing a salt dome. This opened a hole into which the lake catastrophically drained, creating an otherworldly vortex that swallowed 11 barges.

Texas Brine may have also stored naturally occurring radioactive material in the well beneath the sinkhole, and state officials are investigating to see if they were illegally placed there. So far there hasn't been evidence that radioactive materials have reached the surface.

Sinkholes are also a major problem in Florida, where they are becoming increasingly common. According to NBC News, some researchers think that this is due in part to more water being removed from the ground for agriculture and other reasons, which changes the underlying geology and makes sinkholes more likely to form.

Goats Climbing Near-Vertical 160ft Dam

ORIGINAL: My Amazing Earth

by Amazing Earth

January 15, 2013

You would not believe what these dots are on the 160ft wall of Cingino Dam in Italy! Those are goats!

In the past months, we have featured some goat acrobatic spectacle here in our website; we have tree climbing goats in Morocco and mountain goats making cliffs as their playground. Now we have come across with this new display of goats, specifically the Alpine Ibex, climbing the nearly vertical wall of Cingino Dam in Italy. They are licking the salt deposits in the rocks because their veggie diets don’t provide them with enough sodium.

See the series of mind-blowing photos below to get a closer look plus the video!

Clean Drinking Water for Everyone

ORIGINAL: MTU
April 30, 2012
By Marcia Goodrich

Leaving bottles of water in the sun kills pathogens--but only if the water is transparent. Michigan Tech's Joshua Pearce has devised a simple way to clarify water, so even muddy water could be made safe for drinking. SODIS Eawag photo

Nearly 80 percent of disease in developing countries is linked to bad water and sanitation. Now a scientist at Michigan Technological University has developed a simple, cheap way to make water safe to drink, even if it’s muddy.

It’s easy enough to purify clear water. The solar water disinfection method, or SODIS, calls for leaving a transparent plastic bottle of clear water out in the sun for six hours. That allows heat and ultraviolet radiation to wipe out most pathogens that cause diarrhea, a malady that kills 4,000 children a day in Africa.

It’s a different story if the water is murky, as it often is where people must fetch water from rivers, streams and boreholes. “In the developing world, many people don’t have access to clear water, and it’s very hard to get rid of the suspended clay particles,” says Joshua Pearce, an associate professor of materials science and engineering. “But if you don’t, SODIS doesn’t work. The microorganisms hide under the clay and avoid the UV.”

Thus, to purify your water, you first have to get the clay to settle out, a process called flocculation. Working with student Brittney Dawney of Queen’s University in Ontario, Pearce discovered that one of the most abundant minerals on Earth does this job very well: sodium chloride, or simple table salt.

Salt is inexpensive and available almost everywhere. And it doesn’t take very much to make muddy water clear again.

“The water has a lower sodium concentration than Gatorade,” Pearce says. This would still be too much salt to pass muster as American tap water, but American tap water is not the alternative.

“I’ve drunk this water myself. If I were somewhere with no clean water and had kids with diarrhea, and this could save their lives, I’d use this, no question,” he says.

Salt works best when the suspended particles are a type of clay called bentonite. The technique doesn’t work as well with other kinds of clay. However, by adding a little bentonite with the salt to water containing these different clays, most of the particles glom together and settle out, creating water clear enough for SODIS treatment.

Pearce and Dawney are running more tests on water containing various types of clays, and they are also investigating different soil types across Africa to see where their methods might work the best.

Their paper “Optimizing the Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) Method by Decreasing Turbidity with NaCl” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene for Development and will appear in June. A preprint of the paper is available here.

Michigan Technological University (www.mtu.edu) is a leading public research university developing new technologies and preparing students to create the future for a prosperous and sustainable world. Michigan Tech offers more than 130 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in engineering; forest resources; computing; technology; business; economics; natural, physical and environmental sciences; arts; humanities; and social sciences.