Weeks Island salt dome under review for hazardous waste storage
Yet another out-of-state company is attempting to use one of south Louisiana’s salt domes for industrial purposes. CCS Midstream Services, a Canadian oilfield waste company with facilities in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia has applied for a permit to pump a slurry of crude oil, crude oil components, drilling mud, hydrocarbons and drill cuttings mixed with salt water into the Weeks Island salt dome.
Three of Louisiana’s coastal salt domes--Weeks Island, Avery Island and Jefferson Island lie in Iberia Parish. While Avery Island’s salt dome has been in private hands since the 1830s and thus protected, both the Weeks and Jefferson Island domes have been under pressure from industry for commercial use. Atlanta based AGL Resources is in a battle with residents surrounding Lake Peigneur over the use of the underwater dome as a storage cavern for compressed natural gas. That fight is currently being played out in the Louisiana Legislature.
Meanwhile, Weeks Island, which is located in Vermilion Bay, is being eyed as a place to dump exploration and production waste from the booming oilfield. Morton Salt had a mine in the dome, and from 1977 to 1992, the federal government stored crude oil in the excavated cavern. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve facility was emptied in 1993 when it was discovered that there was faulting at surface level and a possibility of the oil leaching into Vermilion Bay. The SPR cavern was filled with brine to keep it stable.
CCS Midstream is looking at a second cavern in the dome. In order to fill the SPR cavern, salt was solution mined at a deeper level and the resulting brine pumped in as the crude oil was pumped out. CCS applied to the state Department of Natural Resources for a permit in 2007 to use that deep cavern for oilfield waste disposal. CCS Midstream needs both a Coastal Use Permit and a Conservation Permit to begin barging waste in through the Intracoastal Waterway and to the docking facility in Weeks Bay for disposal in the salt dome. The permits are currently under review. Should they be granted, the cavern could hold up to 11 million barrels of waste.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
Philip deMahy Sr., a once respected New Iberia ad exec, was sentenced May 2 to spend the next two years (he faced up to 100 years) in a state penitentiary after state and federal investigators found dozens of images depicting children engaged in lewd sexual acts on his personal computer.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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