Have you been following the corporate created sinkhole that has destroyed a whole community of upscale homes? It's been a year since the Sink/Stink Hole began.
Truth out reporter, Mike Luwig does an amazing job telling the whole story here:
Life at Louisiana's Toxic Sinkhole: An Eco-Disaster Continues With No End in Sight
This was taken last October. The sinkhole has grown from 3 acres to 24 acres in a year. A whole down was told to evacuate. Funny, you don't hear much about this on the news.
Here's a recent picture:
It took Jindal months to respond to this disaster.
Under pressure from local officials and the press, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal stepped up in March to demand that Texas Brine offer to buy out the evacuated homes. Texas Brine has settled buyouts of 63 of the 150 homes in the evacuation zone, and owners of another 30 will continue to negotiate, according to Cranch. Others have filed lawsuits for damages.
But there's a problem, free markets being what they are in Lousiana.
Schaff responds, however, that with hundreds of people displaced by the evacuation, property values in the surrounding area have increased, and the offers made by Texas Brine are not high enough to replace a home with a new house somewhere else.
Like other residents, Schaff met with a third-party moderator, hired by Texas Brine, to negotiate a buyout settlement. Offers and counteroffers were made, but Schaff remained frustrated and left the bargaining table to join in a class action lawsuit. "The process was like dealing with a used car salesman, except this is your life, this is your home," he says.
I thought we should acknowledge the suffering in Bayou Corne.
The disaster was brought on by Occidental Chemical (OxyChem), a wholly owned subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations.
Gov. Jindal and local officials recently filed their own lawsuits against Texas Brine and Occidental Chemical Company, which owns the property, for environmental damages cause by the collapsed cavern. The state has already spent $12 million responding to the disaster, and state officials want the companies to pay their fair share.
Do read the article where you will learn that brine is still being extracted in a cavern adjacent to this collapsed cavern and where there are still small, rumbling earthquakes threatening adjacent communities.
Will the people of Louisiana ever tire enough of environmental disasters and explosion enough to dump the Republican Party? Or is voting in this state corrupt?
It's seems like there is an Explosion Story coming out of Louisiana quite regularly.