john in la
Well-known Member
With all the drought of last year and now this year. The price of corn and wondering how this will affect food and gas prices.One must wonder where we are headed next year.
The Midwest drought has come to Louisiana………
Last year we had a dead zone in the gulf that covered almost 7000 sq miles from all the fresh water dumping into the gulf.
This year saltwater has backed up into the river about 90 miles. With low river flow the heavier saltwater runs under the fresh water up river. This has caused plant water intakes and city drinking water intakes to suck up salt water.
The Army Corps of Engineers has let out a 8.1 million dollar contract to build a underwater sill (speed bump) in the bottom of the river to stop the salt water. The sill forces the saltwater to turn up getting caught in the fresh water flow and pushed back out to sea. The corps has done this before and it worked. Lets hope it works this time or drinking water and oil refineries may have more water intake problems.
On another note…….
Locals were feeling small earthquakes for weeks. Come to find out they think it was huge chunks of salt falling off the ceiling of a closed salt mine. They got this assumption a few weeks ago when the top caved in causing a huge sink hole in the swamp. Not really a big problem till you consider the sink hole is feet away from a gas pipe line corridor (seen in the top of the picture) and is only 1500 feet away from another salt mine that contains 1.5 million barrels of highly volatile liquid butane that the news is claiming has the explosive capacity of 100 Hiroshima nuclear bombs. And if one goes off there are several others in the area that could blow from the resulting earthquake.
This has been one crazy year.
The Midwest drought has come to Louisiana………
Last year we had a dead zone in the gulf that covered almost 7000 sq miles from all the fresh water dumping into the gulf.
This year saltwater has backed up into the river about 90 miles. With low river flow the heavier saltwater runs under the fresh water up river. This has caused plant water intakes and city drinking water intakes to suck up salt water.
The Army Corps of Engineers has let out a 8.1 million dollar contract to build a underwater sill (speed bump) in the bottom of the river to stop the salt water. The sill forces the saltwater to turn up getting caught in the fresh water flow and pushed back out to sea. The corps has done this before and it worked. Lets hope it works this time or drinking water and oil refineries may have more water intake problems.
On another note…….
Locals were feeling small earthquakes for weeks. Come to find out they think it was huge chunks of salt falling off the ceiling of a closed salt mine. They got this assumption a few weeks ago when the top caved in causing a huge sink hole in the swamp. Not really a big problem till you consider the sink hole is feet away from a gas pipe line corridor (seen in the top of the picture) and is only 1500 feet away from another salt mine that contains 1.5 million barrels of highly volatile liquid butane that the news is claiming has the explosive capacity of 100 Hiroshima nuclear bombs. And if one goes off there are several others in the area that could blow from the resulting earthquake.
This has been one crazy year.
