Request to Senators Landrieu and Vitter to get involved in this crisis from a resident

Senator Landrieu and Vitter

I am a resident of Bayou Corne in Assumption Parish and have a small favor to ask you. We have been dealing with an incident here over the past year which has finally developed into a full-fledged crisis which necessitated that approximately 150 families have had to be mandatorily evacuated since August 3rd.

The situation involves a collapse of one of the brine producing caverns that our State Office of the Department of Natural Resources directly oversees. Also, there is some jurisdiction from what I understand from the US Dept. of Interior as well as the EPA.

To be brief, we have a salt dome in our area that is being mined for brine and some of the already mined caverns are being used to store hydrocarbons, pressurized butane being stored in the closest cavern to our community. These caverns are a few thousand feet tall and about 300 feet in diameter. There are about 57 of these in various locations in the dome and 23 of which are used as storage vessels. These vessels have failed over the years (just as this one has failed recently) one of which caused the permanent evacuation of our neighboring community, Grand Bayou in 2003.

Our local and state officials are trying to resolve this particular incident, however the gas which has been released into the aquifer is highly pressurized and spreading from under our community towards the community of Pierre Part. They are FINALLY beginning the process of venting the aquifer, but the first two wells that were drilled in it experienced blow outs and were forced to be plugged and abandoned. In the meantime, the pressure continues to build and the gas spreads closer to Pierre Part in one direction and towards Brusly St. Martin and Paincourtville in the other direction. They still have yet to determine the source of the release, so are not even close to understanding how to close if off, if that will be possible at all. Picture if you will a smaller version of the BP oil spill where instead of the oil coming out of the casing on the ocean floor, we have gas escaping from a huge crevice beneath the aquifer which cannot be capped.

As it stands right now, we have our  Office of Emergency Preparedness director for the parish as a coordinator, with major participation from other parish officials as well as the state DEQ, DNR, State Police, Civil Air Patrol, Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, LDWF, USGS and LDH all participating to some degree. My concern is that even if this problem is eventually resolved, speaking on behalf of the residents in this area including those who use Highway 70 as a means of travel to and from school, work, etc., we understand the need for the brine mining for the chemical industry, but we have vehement objections to the seven companies using the salt dome to store hundreds of millions of gallons of pressurized butane beneath our feet. When the company where I work builds a small 5 gallon butane bottle, we follow stringent rules, regulations and calculations to determine that the finished product is completely safe for the use intended. There are also checks that are done to verify that the vessel during its service has not corroded or eroded beyond specification limits. This is for even the tiniest pressure vessel that we fabricate! These storage caverns are basically the same identical vessels except several million times larger. There is no such code similar code for determining the maximum allowable pressures and calculating the effects of the natural defects within the dome would have on the integrity of the cavern / pressure vessel. It is our firm belief, judging from the past failures, that this particular dome is unstable, full of internal defects, and is not a candidate for use in this manner.

We ask you to see if the EPA can send a representative to review the water quality and air quality standards that our DEQ is checking. There are very strong odors of crude and/or diesel that waft through the area depending on the wind direction. They claim that their meters are not picking up any traces of VOC’ etc. and the air and water are completely safe. It would calm fears if we had back up from the feds to verify this. Our mistrust of the state officials goes back to the half-truths that we were told from the beginning as well as the DNR’s cover-up of the fact that this particular cavern began failing a few years back.

We also implore you to see what you and the Department of Interior can do to completely eliminate their use in the storage capacity and if at all possible, to prevent further mining of this dome.

We thank you in advance for your assistance.

A concerned resident of Bayou Corne