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The Bayou Corne sinkhole (french: Doline de Bayou Corne) was created from a collapsed underground
salt dome A salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when salt (or other evaporite minerals) intrudes into overlying rocks in a process known as diapirism. Salt domes can have unique surface and subsurface structures, and they can be discovered using ...
cavern operated by Texas Brine Company and owned by
Occidental Petroleum Occidental Petroleum Corporation (often abbreviated Oxy in reference to its ticker symbol and logo) is an American company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration in the United States, and the Middle East as well as petrochemical manufacturing in the ...
. The
sinkhole A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are locally also known as ''vrtače'' and shakeholes, and to openi ...
, located near the community of Bayou Corne in northern
Assumption Parish Assumption Parish (french: Paroisse de l'Assomption, es, Parroquia de la Asunción) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 census, the population was 23,421. Its parish seat is Napoleonville. Assumption Parish was ...
,
Louisiana Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-smallest by area and the 25th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. Louisiana is borde ...
, was discovered on August 3, 2012, and 350 nearby residents were advised to evacuate. Scientists have stated that the evacuation order could last for years.


Background

Bayous In usage in the Southern United States, a bayou () is a body of water typically found in a flat, low-lying area. It may refer to an extremely slow-moving stream, river (often with a poorly defined shoreline), marshy lake, wetland, or creek. They ...
such as Bayou Corne were largely settled by the
Acadians The Acadians (french: Acadiens , ) are an ethnic group descended from the French who settled in the New France colony of Acadia during the 17th and 18th centuries. Most Acadians live in the region of Acadia, as it is the region where the des ...
in the late 1700s, who were attracted to the locations for its economic potential as an
alligator An alligator is a large reptile in the Crocodilia order in the genus ''Alligator'' of the family Alligatoridae. The two extant species are the American alligator (''A. mississippiensis'') and the Chinese alligator (''A. sinensis''). Additiona ...
and
crawfish Crayfish are freshwater crustaceans belonging to the clade Astacidea, which also contains lobsters. In some locations, they are also known as crawfish, craydids, crawdaddies, crawdads, freshwater lobsters, mountain lobsters, rock lobsters, mu ...
nesting site. Beneath much of the state of Louisiana, including these bayous, are
salt domes A salt dome is a type of structural dome formed when salt (or other evaporite minerals) intrudes into overlying rocks in a process known as diapirism. Salt domes can have unique surface and subsurface structures, and they can be discovered using ...
, gigantic deposits left during the formation of the
North American continent North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
. These domes vary wildly in scale and depth, some as much as 35,000 feet below the surface and as large as Mount Everest. With such depths and dimensions, these domes are naturally under thousands of pounds per square inch of pressure. The economic value of salt domes has been exploited for centuries.
Salt mining Salt mining extracts natural salt deposits from underground. The mined salt is usually in the form of halite (commonly known as rock salt), and extracted from evaporite formations. History Before the advent of the modern internal combustio ...
has been going on in Louisiana since the
Antebellum period In the history of the Southern United States, the Antebellum Period (from la, ante bellum, lit= before the war) spanned the end of the War of 1812 to the start of the American Civil War in 1861. The Antebellum South was characterized by ...
, and in the 20th century, the government began using these underground salt caverns as storage reservoirs for
crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...
. Where there is a juncture of mining, petroleum engineering, and drilling, care must be taken to maintain stability, so as to prevent a disaster as happened at
Lake Peigneur Lake Peigneur (locally pronounced ) is a brackish lake in the U.S. state of Louisiana, north of Delcambre and west of New Iberia, near the northernmost tip of Vermilion Bay. With a maximum depth of , it is the deepest lake in Louisiana. Its ...
. The
Napoleonville Napoleonville is a village and the parish seat of Assumption Parish, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. The population was 660 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Pierre Part Micropolitan Statistical Area. The village is best known as the loca ...
Dome lies beneath Assumption Parish, and was characterized by 53 distinct caverns, six of which were operated by Texas Brine. One of these, Oxy3, owned by
Occidental Petroleum Occidental Petroleum Corporation (often abbreviated Oxy in reference to its ticker symbol and logo) is an American company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration in the United States, and the Middle East as well as petrochemical manufacturing in the ...
, was more than a mile below the surface. Oxy3 was less than 100 feet from the nearest oil and gas storage-sheath, a distance that, while unsafe, was not illegal. In 2010, Texas Brine applied for a permit to expand Oxy3. Its subsequent pressure tests were unsatisfactory, yet the company felt that the cavern would be able to withstand the pressure regardless.


The incident

In June 2012, residents of Bayou Corne began to notice unusual phenomena; the ground was prone to shaking and bubbles began to arise from the water. The
US Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, an ...
noted an increase in
seismic activity An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...
, but could not point to an exact source or cause. The local government sent in experts, who suspected a natural gas pipeline leak, but that assumption proved false. As the symptoms worsened towards the end of July, Texas Brine officially denied the likelihood of a sinkhole. In reality, the Oxy3 cavern had begun to collapse. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal issued an evacuation order on August 3, 2012 after residents reported smells of crude oil throughout the town. Texas Brine investigated the situation by drilling a relief well and found that the outer wall of the salt dome had collapsed, allowing sediment to pour into the cavern and oil and gas to escape to the surface, causing the shaking and bubbles residents had observed.


Expansion

At first, when the sinkhole appeared, it spanned a
hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...
(2.5 acres). As of late February 2014, the sinkhole was 26 acres and growing. Texas Brine is still responsible for managing the sinkhole and has burned off 25 million cubic feet of gas in an attempt to deplete the escaping reserves. Areas in the vicinity of Bayou Corne have demonstrated a similar, bubbling-up phenomenon, though as of yet no definite connection has been made between these and the original sinkhole. Scientists have no conclusive answer to when the evacuation orders—largely dependent on the escaping
methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The relative abundance of methane on Eart ...
gas—will be lifted, yet 3D seismic surveys completed at the beginning of January 2014 show that the sinkhole's expansion is slowing as it begins to stabilize. Aside from the methane escaping via bubbles to the surface, the sinkhole has a tendency to “burp” up debris. This is how its expansion is patterned. Seismic activity will occur, causing it to eject some debris—both solid matter and oil—which makes room for more to slough into the hole, including dirt and trees. In 2018 it was reported in the newspaper ''Houma Today'' (Gannett Co) that the sinkhole has grown to 34 acres.


Impact

The residents of Bayou Corne, who as of March 2014 have been evacuated for 19 months, have involved themselves in a protracted legal battle with Texas Brine. From the start of the evacuation, each resident has received checks from Texas Brine for $875 per week. Some residents receive these checks without having even left the town, in defiance of the evacuation order. One such resident, Mike Schaff, said of Texas Brine's financial settlement option “They think we’re just a bunch of ignorant coonasses." Nine months after the evacuation, Governor Jindal threatened to sue Texas Brine unless they offered a buyout option to residents. Accordingly, Texas Brine offered to deal with the 350 affected residents. As of March 2014, 65 people had accepted some form of buyout. Others have opted to join a class-action lawsuit against Texas Brine which was set to go to trial in 2014. The ecological effects of these developments on local flora and fauna are yet unstudied, but the sinkhole continues to destroy nearby cypress trees, swallowing them during expansion. ''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
''’s Tim Murphy has summarized the incident thusly: “Bayou Corne is the biggest ongoing industrial disaster in the United States you haven't heard of.” One class-action lawsuit led to a proposed $48.1 million settlement in 2014, although some residents felt that the legal fees to be awarded ($12.03 million) were too high a percentage of the total. In September 2014, Texas Brine requested a permit to discharge wastewater back into the Bayou Corne sinkhole in an effort to fix some of the damage it has caused, which sent former and current residents of the town into a frenzy as a heated debate ensued over whether the company believed to be responsible for severe damage and loss of homes should be given permission to tamper more with an area already considered to be "deeply contaminated," as environmental activist Nara Crowley stated. In July 2015, Texas Brine began a series of lawsuits against Occidental Petroleum, claiming that an oil well drilled by Occidental Petroleum in 1986 triggered the cavern wall break that led to the creation of the sinkhole. Texas Brine is currently seeking $100 million in damages from Occidental Petroleum over the issue. In 2018, it was reported that a state district judge ruled that fault was shared among three companies: Texas Brine was 35% at fault, Occidental Chemical was 50% at fault, and
Vulcan Vulcan may refer to: Mythology * Vulcan (mythology), the god of fire, volcanoes, metalworking, and the forge in Roman mythology Arts, entertainment and media Film and television * Vulcan (''Star Trek''), name of a fictional race and their home p ...
was 15% at fault. Appeals to the ruling are expected.


See also

* Döda Fallet *
Lake Peigneur Lake Peigneur (locally pronounced ) is a brackish lake in the U.S. state of Louisiana, north of Delcambre and west of New Iberia, near the northernmost tip of Vermilion Bay. With a maximum depth of , it is the deepest lake in Louisiana. Its ...
* List of sinkholes of the United States *
Rylands v Fletcher ''Rylands v Fletcher'' (1868) LR 3 HL 330 is a leading decision by the House of Lords which established a new area of English tort law. It established the rule that one's non-natural use of their land, which leads to another's land being damaged ...


References

{{Reflist, 2


External links


Assumption Parish information page

Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness response Bayou Corne incident

Louisiana Department of Natural Resources – Bayou Corne incident

Texas Brine Company – Bayou Corne Incident page

Texas Brine Sinkhole Profile

Forgotten Bayou documentary film
Sinkholes of the United States Disasters in Louisiana Landforms of Assumption Parish, Louisiana Landforms of Louisiana