Louisiana Sinkhole Radiation: Abuse And Cover Up Of Worst Eco-Catstrophy Continues ~ Senator “Genocide In Progress”

As human rights to health abuses continue in the giant Louisiana sinkhole area, with its dangerous radiation levels released for over four months, state officials say they are investigating how Texas Brine Co. LLC managed the naturally occurring radioactive material there and whether it illegally disposed of the “non-dangerous” radioactive material under Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou communities that are above the Napoleonville Dome in the mid-1990s.

Louisiana sinkhole engulfing entire 1-mile by 3-mile salt dome

Published on Nov 30, 2012 by dutchsinse

Four options …

1. All the recent explosions are a series of coincidental ‘accidents’…

Or

2. The explosions could be natural but a new development (static buildup occurring in multiple fuel tanks/gas lines)

Or

3. The Explosions are man made (some group causing these explosions using energy or frequency weapons).

Or

4. The explosions are being caused by large pockets of released methane (natural gas) from above the planets crust a few miles down in the Earth .

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Option 3 is a bit far fetched.. but with the way things are bouncing back and forth between the US, Russia, and China.. worthy to keep on the back burner for future thought. Don’t discount it as a possibility I should say.

Option 4 does not explain the fuel tanks exploding, or the ships/helicopter/gas line/p propane tank explosions recently.

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coordinates of the Ohio sinkhole are : 40°31’51.80″N , 81°30’30.03″W

Link to the Ohio Sinkhole video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF3ncFY_sYo

map of recent explosions: (US explosions only mapped so far)

http://tinyurl.com/cerhmzf

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Video I made back in August regarding what could happen with Bayou Corne, Louisiana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcbLvO0-huQ

Link to the information on Bayou Corne, Louisiana Sinkhole:

http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/?s=sinkhole&submit=Search

link to view the Louisiana sinkhole wells/salt dome:

http://www.climateviewer.com

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Link to my public facebook page — containing multiple explosion reports over the past few weeks: Look at how many there are — US, Russia, China … strange.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dutchsinse/296574443728320

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past posts on the craton edge showing movement:

http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/?s=craton&submit=Search

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More on the Indo-Australia plate breakup:

http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/?s=indo-australia&submit=Search

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plenty of videos on sinkholes this past year (2012):

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sinkhole+%2B2012&oq=sink…

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past posts on fracking location earthquakes (NM, CO, OK, AR, OH, PA, VA.. etc..) :

http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/?s=frack&submit=Search

Radiation, a grave human right to health violation at Louisiana sinkhole

After four months of dangerous levels of radiation being released at Louisiana’s giant sinkhole, impacting lives of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people, finger-pointing has begun regarding whose fault it is that the naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) is there.

NORM is a common petrochemical industrial complex waste problem potentially negatively impacting the human right to health.

NORM is a frequent byproduct of oil and gas drilling processes. It creates wastes that industry has often dumped improperly – in water, on land, by burning and in “accidents” – to prevent storing it illegally.

Oil and gas drilling processes can concentrate naturally occurring radioactive isotopes underground at various levels, sometimes posing health threats, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Brine production, such as in Texas Brine’s operations, are included in those that can concentrate NORM. Some oil and gas service companies are contracted to store NORM for oil and gas companies. Texas Brine is an oil and gas service company.

Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) confirmed last week that a 1979 state statute prohibited disposing NORM in large underground salt deposits like Napoleonville Dome until 1999 legislative changes made such disposal legal.

“What we’re going to do is investigate this thing the best we can with the information from 1995 and move forward as appropriate,” said DEQ spokesman Rodney Mallett.

In August 1995, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Office of Conservation did not object when Texas Brine considered putting up to 20 cubic feet of NORM in an underground company cavern in the Napoleonville Dome and in another salt dome in Lafourche Parish, according to DEQ and state Office of Conservation records.

It is unclear if Texas Brine followed through on those plans, according to the Advocate.

Texas Brine officials said in a statement last week that they did not put NORM into its caverns but that it remains onsite under a standing license that DEQ gave to it.

“Since the concentration level of NORM was so low, and the amount of accumulated scale was so small, it was determined to leave the scale in place,” Texas Brine officials stated after told that DEQ concluded NORM disposal in salt domes was illegal in 1995.

The company statement contradicts detailed comments from its officials on Aug. 10 that a small amount of NORM was disposed in the Napoleonville Dome with DNR Office of Conservation approval but that it posed no risk to the public.

DEQ and EPA tests showed surface radiation in the Bayou Corne area, including in the sinkhole, is not above background levels and poses no risk, state officials have said. A major problem is that the state raises the “safe” limit of such hazardous materials.

As early as August, a non-government group, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, began urging Bayou Corne sinkhole area residents to use a new record log. At that time, a veteran radiation expert said Louisiana environmental officials were “in denial” over hazards posed by elevated radium levels that were actually fifteen times higher than the state limit, a “worst nightmare coming true” in the sinkhole vicinity, according to environmental attorney Stuart Smith.

Explosions

Stanley Waligora, a New Mexico-based radiation protection consultant and leading authority on health risks of NORM confirmed that radium levels at Bayou Corne’s sinkhole are not within safe limits, but instead, roughly 15 times higher than the state’s acceptable level, Smith had said.

The information about radium had been buried in a state news release, had been poorly written, and had gone “out of its way to downplay the results,” Smith had said.

In 1979, the state Legislature prohibited disposing “radioactive waste or other radioactive material of any nature” in salt domes. That la took effect Jan. 1, 1980 during controversy over U.S. Department of Energy plans to store high-level radioactive waste, such as from nuclear power plants, in salt domes.

The salt dome ban for radioactive waste remains. In 1999, however, the Louisiana Legislature exempted oil and gas exploration and production wastes, including NORM, from the statutory definition of “radioactive waste,” DEQ officials said.

La. sinkhole emergency zone quakes, methane extends 2 miles

Before that, NORM was under the definition of “radioactive waste” and, therefore, prohibited from salt dome disposal in 1995, DEQ officials said in an email to the Advocate.

DEQ and DNR Office of Conservation have dual and sometimes overlapping regulatory authority regarding salt domes, oil and gas operations and other matters.

DEQ officials said NORM disposal in a salt dome or a well requires concurrence from both DNR and DEQ.

In Aug. 31, 1995, letter, James Welsh, then Office of Conservation’s Injection and Mining Division director, gave to Texas Brine a no objection letter for NORM disposal in a salt dome. Welsh is now commissioner of DNR’s Office of Conservation that leads DNR’s oversight of the Texas Brine cavern failure.

DNR spokesman Patrick Courreges says the no objection letter for NORM disposal did not authorize its to dispose NORM in the salt dome because the Office of Conservation does not have regulatory authority to do that.

“The letter communicated to the company that the Office of Conservation’s governing statutes and rules contained no prohibition for the activity and that the Office of Conservation did not regulate NORM activities,” wrote Courreges.

“Genocide In Progress”

— Senator Fred Mills

General Information

President: John A. Alario

President Pro Tempore: Senator Sharon Weston Broome

Secretary: Glenn Koepp

Contact Information:
Post Office Box 94183
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70804
(225) 342-2040
websen@legis.la.gov

The Office of Conservation regulations apply to “mechanics of safely operating the well and cavern” but NORM falls under DEQ regulations, according to Courrges.

In a subsequent Sept. 20, 1995, letter, Texas Brine Environmental, Health and Safety Manager Scott Whitelaw asked DEQ for authority to dispose of NORM in the salt dome caverns.

DEQ’s Mallett has stated that no formal denial letter is in agency records but that phone logs show DEQ officials told Texas Brine it was not granting authority and to wait on disposal.

“In our records, they never asked again,” he said.

On Aug. 10 in Ascension Parish, Bruce Martin, vice president of Texas Brine operations, said a small amount of pipe scale fell out of its Oxy Geismar No. 3 well head during workovers.

Some scientists believe that Texas Brine’s cavern, Oxy Geismar Well No. 3, that is in the Napoleonville Dome, had a major wall failure resulting in the release of oil and methane in the Grand Bayou and Bayou Corne areas and the sinkhole development. Some of the Grand Bayou and Bayou Corne communities have abided by a mandatory evacuation declared by Governor Bobby Jindal. Although the governor has been petitioned to widen the evacuation zone proportional to the growth of the sinkhole and expanded bubbling sites and earthquakes, he has refrained from doing so.

Testing of the pipe scale found dirt had a radioactivity of 20 to 40 micro-rems per hour, according to Martin. The standard of the NORM was above 20 micro-rems per hour. That standard has since been raised to 50 micro-rems per hour, Martin explained.

Raising the acceptable limit of poisonous materials so that they can be reported as “safe” is a standard operating procedure in protection agencies. The same happened with seafood testing after the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico began.

“So the end result is, we submitted a request to DNR to place this material, this normally occurring radioactive material, that was actually about a little bit less than a cubic yard, to place it back in the well where it came from, back into the earth,” Martin said.

“And DNR granted us that request. We did that work. That material was solid dirt, dirt with some NORM in it, and it was placed in the bottom of the well, and it would be my guess and firm belief that that’s where it sits today.”

Talking points distributed that day also said NORM was in the cavern and posed no risk.

Sonny Cranch, spokesman for Texas Brine, said last week that officials “misspoke” then in their attempt to respond to questions about NORM and that it was never put in the cavern.

“This is a very confusing saga — when you get to the end of the (Advocate) piece, it’s unclear just what exactly Texas Brine did or didn’t bury at the sinkhole,” Smith stated in his blog post Tuesday. “But that is the broader point — neither the company nor state regulators have been clear about has or hasn’t been taking place at this site for years.”

Smith added, “And they haven’t been either honest or forthcoming with the people of Louisiana now, in this hour of crisis for displaced families and for the worried residents still in the area.”

What is also confusing to some is just how dangerous NORM is, a confusion caused by what Smith refers to as corporate and government dose dancing.

Dose dancing, a radiation psychological operation citizens need to know: Even small radiation doses that are harmful

Low-level, even natural radiation is potentially damaging, according to scientific studies, including a newly released study report.

Smith refers to corporate and government hiding the truth about radiation as “dose dancing.”

“‘Dose dancing’ is a load of baloney,” Smith stated Tuesday. “My experience as a lawyer has shown me that even exposure to levels of radiation that are considered low can in fact be harmful. And increasingly there is scientific research backing this up.

The latest study on this subject is what Smith calls “a bombshell.” He quotes about the new study:

“Even the very lowest levels of radiation are harmful to life, scientists have concluded in the Cambridge Philosophical Society’s journal Biological Reviews. Reporting the results of a wide-ranging analysis of 46 peer-reviewed studies published over the past 40 years, researchers from the University of South Carolina and the University of Paris-Sud found that variation in low-level, natural background radiation was found to have small, but highly statistically significant, negative effects on DNA as well as several measures of health.
The review is a meta-analysis of studies of locations around the globe that have very high natural background radiation as a result of the minerals in the ground there, including Ramsar, Iran, Mombasa, Kenya, Lodeve, France, and Yangjiang, China. These, and a few other geographic locations with natural background radiation that greatly exceeds normal amounts, have long drawn scientists intent on understanding the effects of radiation on life. Individual studies by themselves, however, have often only shown small effects on small populations from which conclusive statistical conclusions were difficult to draw.

Smith says that what these researchers learned “is alarming indeed”:

“The scientists reported significant negative effects in a range of categories, including immunology, physiology, mutation and disease occurrence. The frequency of negative effects was beyond that of random chance.
‘There’s been a sentiment in the community that because we don’t see obvious effects in some of these places, or that what we see tends to be small and localized, that maybe there aren’t any negative effects from low levels of radiation,’ said Mousseau. ‘But when you do the meta-analysis, you do see significant negative effects.’
‘It also provides evidence that there is no threshold below which there are no effects of radiation,’ he added. ‘A theory that has been batted around a lot over the last couple of decades is the idea that is there a threshold of exposure below which there are no negative consequences. These data provide fairly strong evidence that there is no threshold — radiation effects are measurable as far down as you can go, given the statistical power you have at hand.’”

“I cannot understate the importance of this: “Long-term exposure to radiation is not safe, even at so-called low levels,” Smith asserted. “”This simple fact needs to inform our quest for environmental safety and justice on many levels — whether the issue is as high-profile as the lingering aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, or as down-to-earth as radioactive pipe from the oil patch that’s been used to build a school playground, as we discovered during that Chevron case.

“All citizens need to learn about the risks, the remedies, and the potential recourse,” Smith states.

After Marco Kaltofen, a civil engineer and president of Boston Chemical Data Corp. analyzed the radiation in Bayou Corne, he wrote:

“Radium in the body is absorbed because it is chemically similar to calcium. The normal maximum guideline level for radium in surface water is 5 picoCuries per liter, (pCi/L). The state’s testing found 82 pCi/L in the water of the growing sinkhole. Radium gives off alpha’ radiation. This form of radiation is extremely dangerous if inhaled or ingested, and less dangerous if exposed by skin contact.

“When radium decays, it produces the dangerous radioactive gas, radon. EPA warns that radon gas causes lung cancer, and exposure can be as hazardous to your lungs as a serious cigarette habit.”

Waligora was concerned about DEQ understating Bayou Corne radiation risks because of what he has witnessed in other cases handled by the troubled agency.

He stated, “This is reminiscent of the illegal waste disposal that was discovered several years ago at St. Gabriel. The community complained about illegal disposal of radioactive waste. DEQ sent a team to investigate who determined that there was no problem. Complaints continued and a second DEQ team investigated and again said that there was no problem.

“Finally, a legal action attracted the EPA who found widespread contamination. The responsible party had no worth so the site was cleaned up with Superfund support.

Waligora continues, “The cleanup took over one year and cost over $1million. Quite a bit for ‘no problem.’”

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Deborah Dupré is author of the new book, “Vampire of Macondo,” packed with censored stories about the BP-wrecked Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico that continues causing catastrophic human and environmental devastation. Follow the Vampire of Macondo tour on Twitter. For interviews, email gdeborahdupre@gmail.com.

Examiner