SABRINA CANFIELD
Courthouse News
Aug 14, 2012

Residents living near a sinkhole in a southern Louisiana bayou are not expected to be allowed to return home for at least another month, officials said Friday.

Authorities are investigating the cause of the slurry-filled hole, which is roughly the size of a football field.

An enormous, foul-smelling, possibly radioactive sinkhole swallowed an acre of cypress trees and forced 150 home evacuations, Louisianans say in a class action against the Texas Brine Co.

“On Friday, August 3, 2012, a sinkhole, 422 feet deep and 372 feet wide emerged releasing a foul diesel odor and created salt-water slurry, which contains diesel fuel,” the federal class action begins.

Lead plaintiff Lisa LeBlanc and the class live in Assumption Parish, about 50 miles south of Baton Rouge. According to the federal complaint, a salt cavern failed, which Texas Brine Co. was using to store radioactive material, a byproduct of the drilling industry.

The class claims that Texas Brine knew the cavern walls were liable to breach as early as January 2011, but failed to warn the public.

“The public was not warned in January 2011 or any time thereafter or prior of the potential danger resulting from the failure of this cavern and the general public had no knowledge of the storage of the radioactive material in the cavern,” the complaint states.

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