This week's thread for Lake Fubar......
http://theadvocate.com/home/5715460-125/berm-expected-to-contain-sinkhole
http://lasinkhole.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/code-3-not-really/
http://theadvocate.com/home/5716073-125/sinkhole-work-stops-as-tremors
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http://theadvocate.com/home/5715460-125/berm-expected-to-contain-sinkhole
Berm expected to contain sinkhole brine, oil
Oil, brine expected to hold in berm
BAYOU CORNE — Bulldozers and men have been at work building the next phase of a 1.5-mile-long berm and upgraded levee system aimed at containing the briney and oily contents of the Assumption Parish sinkhole.
Black geotextile fabric and white geosynthetic liner — about 7,800 linear feet of each — are being laid on top of a sand base that was finished in February, Texas Brine Co. officials said in a written response to questions. The white liner contains a special clay and is used to contain landfills and ponds.
Bulldozers are then spreading and compacting clay on top of the liner and the fabric, an estimated 7,300 cubic yards in all, company officials said.
Conservation Commissioner Jim Welsh ordered construction of the containment system last year as the primary means of keeping the oil and briney water feeding into the sinkhole from below from infiltrating surrounding cypress forests and scenic bayous.
Once completed by July 1 with limestone and drainage structures for heavy rain, the berm will contain 71 acres encompassing the growing 13-acre sinkhole, rise to 5.5 feet above ground level and have a designed lifespan of at least 20 years, Texas Brine officials said in their written statement.
Office of Conservation officials said in a written response to questions that the sinkhole is likely to widen and become more shallow over time even after periodic tremors end but said the hole itself isn’t likely to go anywhere.
“The sinkhole itself is likely to be a permanent feature even after the subsurface has fully stabilized,” officials said.
Conservation said they remain in emergency response mode and have set “no end point” for the berm.
The sinkhole formed last year after the failure of a Texas Brine salt dome cavern deep underground. About 350 people in the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou communities have been evacuated for more than eight months.
Tom Killeen, state Department of Environmental Inspection Division administrator, said it is likely the briney water in the sinkhole will freshen over time from inflowing groundwater.
Monitoring around the berm containment area will continue at least until the sinkhole water becomes homogeneous with the surrounding waterways, but there is no way to know how long that will take, he said.
“I foresee a longterm monitoring plan staying in place,” Killeen said.
Texas Brine officials, who will oversee the berm, said in a statement that filling the sinkhole would not be viable currently due to the sheer volume of the hole, the massive truck traffic required to fill it and the large hole that would be left where fill would be removed.
Conservation officials said they have discussed filling the hole, which has a volume of 1.2 million cubic yards, but are waiting on new seismic data to see what impact the dirt’s added weight would have on the rumbling fractured rock zone lying underneath the sinkhole.
Texas Brine officials said removing the brine is not viable now due to sinkhole stability now but said they will continue to evaluate the idea.
Rodney Mallett, a spokesman for DEQ, said that continued water quality testing since the sinkhole emerged in early August have shown that salt and other contaminants have not escaped into surrounding waterways and affected swamps and fisheries.
While virtually fresh at the surface, the sinkhole’s deepest waters have a projected salinity that would be about 25 percent salt by volume. The ocean has a salinity of 3.5 percent. Salinity in some parts of the Great Salt Lake in Utah reaches 28 percent, according to the U.S. Geological Survey Utah Water Science Center.
Ralph Portier, a professor in the LSU Department of Environmental Sciences, said the salt water poses a risk to fish, invertebrates and the freshwater vegetation, pointing the effect years of salt water intrusion has had on the state’s coastal wetlands, as an example.
While oil and gas condensates coming up from the sinkhole can biodegrade over the long term, he said, salt and other inorganic compounds will not.
He said using a berm to control the site’s hydrology is not any different than what would be done at an industrial site.
“Salt water is denser than fresh water,” Portier said.
“If you hydrologically control the water, you are not going to have that much off-site movement of water,” Portier said.
The heavier, denser brine, Conservation officials say, will tend to stay below fresher water on the top of the sinkhole.
Conservation officials added that any brine moving up the underground fracture zone beneath the sinkhole and its surrounding berm may rise to an aquifer in the area that is only used by industry.
But, for similar reasons related to brine’s density, the brine wouldn’t reach the root zone of the swamp vegetation without first displacing all the fresher aquifer water above the brine.
Conservation officials said that over the very long term — they were asked about a span over hundreds to thousands of years — the sinkhole is likely to fill in or become indistinguishable from the land around it, given Louisiana’s soft soils and frequent floods.
WAFB has some photos we haven’t seen before of Lake FUBAR in this story.
Strange Sounds – Dramatic Pictures And Videos Showing The Louisiana Sinkhole Evolution From August 2012 To April 2013
http://lasinkhole.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/code-3-not-really/
CODE 3 – not really
LA16 is restless
http://theadvocate.com/home/5716073-125/sinkhole-work-stops-as-tremors
Sinkhole work stops as tremors increase
Another round of increased tremors has halted work at the sinkhole near the Bayou Corne community, Assumption Parish officials said Monday.
Work stopped Sunday and again Monday on the sinkhole itself and inside a 1.5-mile containment berm, which surrounds 71 acres that encompass the sinkhole near Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou, parish officials said.
John Boudreaux, director of the parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said Monday the halt in work is done in an abundance of caution based on past experience with the tremors.
Upticks in tremor frequency have sometimes been followed by burps of gas, oil and debris and edge collapses in the sinkhole.
“We just get everybody out of the area and wait for what is going to occur, to occur,” Boudreaux said, adding tremor activity typically slows down afterward.
The 13-acre, 160-foot-deep sinkhole has forced the evacuation of about 350 people for more than eight months from the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou communities lying on either side of the swampland hole.
The increased numbers of tremors Monday are around the sinkhole and near a failed subterranean Texas Brine Co. cavern, the collapse of which is suspected of causing the sinkhole last year. The cavern was carved inside the Napoleonville Dome near its western face.
This collapse has allowed millions of cubic yards of earth and rock to enter the cavern and rise up inside it. That sidewall is still collapsing, scientists have said.
State and local officials have scheduled a community briefing on the sinkhole at 6 p.m. May 1 in the Assumption Parish Community Center, 4910 La. 308, in Napoleonville.
Texas Brine spokesman Sonny Cranch said Monday that construction on the berm also was halted Sunday and Monday but due to wet weather.
He said work would have been suspended due to the tremors, however, had the weather been better.
Boudreaux said scientists reported that in this instance, the number of micro-earthquakes has increased from about 10 tremors per day to 50 per day.
Sometimes known as sharp tremors, the micro-earthquakes have been attributed to breaking rock underground, scientists have said. The breaking rock is filling the failed cavern, which at last measurement was 97 percent full.
Increases in different kinds of tremors several times last month halted work and preceded edge collapses that added more than 1.25 acres to the sinkhole’s surface area, taking down trees and part of a well pad used for access to the lake-like hole and for seismic monitoring.
The stretched out tremors increased in number several times last month are known as “very long period” events. They indicate fluid or gas movement through a zone of fractured rock 800 feet across and 6,000 feet deep that rises up along side the salt dome and under the sinkhole, according to an April 5 scientific presentation made to the state’s expert sinkhole panel.
The fracture zone was created deep underground in conjunction with the Texas Brine cavern failure and rose over a period of at least months to the surface, the presentation says.
The fracture zone also may have tapped into oil and gas bearing formations along the salt dome’s face and is acting as a pathway for the hydrocarbons, as well as salty groundwater, to the reach far shallower strata and the sinkhole.
Boudreaux said Monday the long period events are occurring but not at an increased level.
Hideous Seismic Activity at Lake FUBAR
With a CODE 3 declared — go on – claim this is work trucks!
ALL helicorders going off now … Screen grab from LA12:
11:45 a.m. Advisory from the Office of Conservation
The Office of Conservation, in consultation with Assumption Parish Incident Command, is advising the public that the Oxy 3/sinkhole monitoring alert status has been raised to Code 3 – requiring all work inside and around the sinkhole to cease until further notice. Per Dr. Stephen Horton with USGS, seismic monitoring has detected an increasing trend of subsurface activity in the area around the sinkhole and Oxy 3 area below the sinkhole over the past few days.
CODE 3, CODE 3 . . .
leave that wheelbarrow full of pentolite right there . . . next to the butane cavern, Bill! We gotta scram!Monday News
CODE 3
The parish blog put out an explanation of the Code Levels.
Center for Public Integrity – Louisiana sinkhole shatters calm, prompts buyouts on the bayou
[snip] “. . . Residents living on the fence-line face long odds in their quest to escape. Few communities flex political power, their voices faint against big-muscled industry or slow moving government. . . “
Thanks to Simply for this tip - 
Claims Journal – Louisiana Lawmakers Seek Better Oversight of Salt Mines
Lawmakers are looking to prevent a repeat of the massive Assumption Parish sinkhole that officials say was caused by a collapsed underground salt cavern – and make sure prospective property owners know what may lie beneath the ground before they buy.
The proposed laws filed by four legislators whose districts include the sinkhole area would halt permits for new salt mining operations; limit the reuse of storage caverns after a disaster, such as the development of a sinkhole; mandate regular mapping and monitoring of sites; and impose stiffer fines for noncompliance. . . .
GOHSEP put out the Situation Summary - dated 4-12 – (we forget if we already posted this)
From Idahopicker – on the ‘Blue Ribbon Panel’
LINK – http://youtu.be/jBXXGv712XE
CHOOSE YOUR POISON
Helicorders at Bayou Corne
10 p.m. CST
Happening Now: Huge Oceania Earthquake May Affect Salt Dome Jumble Below
It was so big [last night] it made all the helicorders go off . 
It is still having an affect at Lake FUBAR. Themonster quake in New Guinea may have set things in motion below. . . like a big gong. Let’s watch and see if it calms down or keeps going.
Now is the time for the big brains at Texas Brine to trundle out their wheelbarrow full of pentolite and start putting it in the holes north of Hwy 70 like they threaten to do.
On this topic – see also informative comments here on recent posts.
EXTRA
LA12, LA14, LA15 going off more than the rest and 15 going off the most. Hope LA15 doesn’t down again!
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Seismic Event at Lake FUBAR Overnight + Weekend News
NOTE: “Seismic Event” here is day before New Guinea quake.
LA12 & LA14 show big activity on the helicorders overnight.
6p.m. CST -
GOOD NEWS! LA15 is BACK!! BAD NEWS: It’s all jumping around down there!
The Advocate – Cavity near sinkhole almost filled
Texas Brine denies seismic activity is continuing as usual at the collapsed salt dome (not a sinkhole). They claim it is diminishing.
“Texas Brine’s new depth measurements show that materials pushing upward inside the cavern rose 324 feetbetween Jan. 31 and Tuesday, according to revised figures provided by company officials.”
Texas Brine spokesman, Sonny Cranch didn’t get into the integrity of the nearby caverns or why Texas Brine ignored the 2007 SONAR scans showing the bottom 1000 ft. of the cavern was compromised. No one really expects truth from the salt dome collapsers.
Lake FUBAR beat reporter at the Advocate, David J. Mitchell is up for a big award -
— Continuing Coverage: 1. Jessica Bakeman and Jerry Mitchell, The Clarion-Ledger, “Barbour pardons;” 2. David Mitchell, The Advocate, “Sinkhole forms near site of bayou bubbles;”
Experts Called in to Tackle Bayou Sinkhole Devastation < has great art showing the Titanic would fit in Lake FUBAR 
10 p.m. CST – large 6.6 quake in Oceania shows up on Bayou Corne helicorders.
. . . more
New Madrid Fault
SUNDAY
The Advocate – DEQ plans to measure Bayou Lafourche’s rate of flow
[snip] ” . . . the Bayou Lafourche Freshwater District requested the dye studies to predict how the bayou will react if district pumps on the Mississippi River in Donaldsonville are turned off during major rainstorms.“In particular, it will show how long it would take for freshwater to make its way to the various public water supply intakes in the event the bayou goes septic, as has happened in past storm events,” . . .
