These accidents serve as a sober reminder that I ' along with my 12 neighboring family members, as well as the 5,000 surrounding residents of Lake Peigneur in Erath, Delcambre and New Iberia ' am living on a sleeping giant. Under Lake Peigneur's waters, two large cavities in the salt dome can store 9.4 billion (yes, billion) cubic feet of natural gas. The gas is pressurized at up to 2,700 pounds of pressure per square inch. To put that in perspective, a typical car tire can hold 32 pounds of pressure per square inch.
The gas stored under Lake Peigneur is not there to serve you or me, nor is it a national strategic reserve. It is a commercial facility that yields lucrative profits for Georgia-based utility company AGL Resources Inc. If the billions of cubic feet of gas isn't enough to leave us laying wide-eyed at night, AGL is actively trying to influence our state government to approve the creation of more salt caverns to double the amount of gas they can store.
And by the way, AGL intends on wasting 7 billion (there's the billion again) gallons of our drinking water for their project. As the country watches the legal battle over drinking water in Georgia, AGL has no problem wasting Louisiana's water for its profits.
Gas explosions can occur anywhere, at any time, due to a number of causes. My biggest fear is my fate and the fate of my family and neighbors should something go wrong at Lake Peigneur. I also fear that people will only become aware of the ever-present danger after a catastrophe occurs and say, "Why wasn't anything done to prevent this?" You can join our cause by signing up at www.savelakepeigneur.org.
If you want to see an 800-pound gorilla you don't have to go the zoo. We've got two of them in Lake Peigneur.
MAY 17 Here's a column from James Gill, this time in the Advocate. Gill, who has jumped ship from the Picayune, writes about the absurdity of dueling polls in this post. The numbers are so wildly different, it is obvious that both sides are "cooking the books," he writes. In particular, he looks at Sen. Mary Landrieu, and how her recent actions in DC have been received by those polled. Gill's acerbic, amusing prose is a welcome addition to a paper so conservative as to be occasionally lacking in personality.
MAY 17 Blogger Tom Aswell continues delivering bombshells about the state education department and Gov. Jindal's education "reform" efforts. In this post, he reports that students in the Shreveport area have been signed up for a charter school without their knowledge or consent. Most interesting to Aswell is how this Texas-based charter (with ties to GOP types) got the personal student information it has, if the students didn't give it.
MAY 17 This post by JR Ball in the Baton Rouge Business Report is an interesting tongue-in-cheek look at recent Baton Rouge economic development efforts. Among the items he examines is the idea that gaining a Costco makes BR a "world-class city." (Really? All you need is a different brand of Sam's? MK!) This effort, and other recent ones, are all built on the taxpayer's back, with tax zones, tax incentives and tax rebates, Ball writes.
MAY 17 Blogger CB Forgotston is critical of the legislature's reliance on a revenue-estimating committee's decision to include projected tax amnesty income in this year's forecast. That's a problem, CB posts, because the deadline for these people to pay their taxes is June 30, 2014. So when do you think these people who haven't paid taxes in years are going to pay their taxes? Surely not before June 30, and that means the money won't be there for this year's budget, he argues.
MAY 17 Here's an interesting blog out of California by a Hollywood writer, attorney and academic named Brian Alan Lane. He blogs about higher ed, and was a whistle-blower in a scandal over false credentials. In this post, he takes aim at LSU's new top dog, King Alexander. It's convoluted and a little confusing, but it sure makes Alexander a lot more interesting than he was yesterday.
MAY 17 Blogger Robert Mann writes about the LSU Board's refusal to allow Dr. Fred Cerise to testify before the legislature about Gov. Jindal's plan to close down all the state's charity hospitals and dump the poor on the private system. It's hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Cerise to testify about that, so why would anyone try to prevent him doing so? Mann thinks it is because the powers that be aren't interested in hearing any truth about the plan.
MAY 17 This post on the Louisiana Sinkhole Bugle, a blog that notes developments in the Bayou Corne and Jefferson Island salt domes, talks about a proposed expansion of the salt dome storage under Lake Peigneur in Iberia Parish. Residents are working against it for several reasons, including two biggies: the sinkhole disaster in Bayou Corne and the continuing, unexplained bubbling on the surface of the Lake.
MAY 17 NOLA police arrested more people Thursday accused of either being involved in the Mother's Day shooting or hiding the suspect afterward, this Gambit story reports. The NOLA police chief said he suspects the whole thing was gang-related and throws out a challenge to the gangs: he's got informants now, he says, and he knows a lot more than the gangs want him to know. The people who live in the neighborhoods terrorized by gangs are ready to talk, he says.
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