Brockovich on La. Sinkhole: Explosion Any Minute! No Going Home for Evacuees, 'It's Gone'

Celebrity Human and Earth Rights defender Erin Brockovich at Cancer Super Fund Meeting

Celebrity human and Earth rights advocate Erin Brockovich continues to bring national attention to a sinkhole in south Louisiana’s Grand Bayou community, saying Tuesday that there could be an explosion there any minute and evacuated residents will not be able to return.

“The methane is under extreme pressure,” internationally aclaimed consumer advocate Brockovich told Josh Zipps on HuffPost Live on Tuesday.

It is not only explosive methane lurching throughout at least a two-mile radius from the “sinkhole” that concerns Brockovich. She is also concerned about the highly explosive butane Crosstex is storing in one of the 53 caverns in the collapsing salt dome beneath the “sinkhole,” according to the Huffington Post.

No going home for evacuees, Sacrifice Zone confirmed

Brockovich confirmed that the endearing South Louisiana bayou country is a National Sacrifice Zone, saying that there is no going home to the once pristine and treasured Louisiana swamp.

“It is gone,” Brockovich said.

Dr. Wilma Supra, technical advisor for Louisiana Environmental Action Group, was the first to use the term sacrifice zone relating to the “sinkhole” bayou country impacted by the latest blow to it, after years of having pipelines crisscross under it and wells unmercifully drilled into it like Swiss cheese.

In December, Subra said, “Right now, the focus is what is really happening on the Napoleonville Dome, but it is possible for it to extend out to larger areas.” 

She explained to WWL radio host Garland Robinette the “sinkhole” disaster area residents’ greatest fear at the time.

“So, the fear is that this area is going to have to be a sacrifice zone,” Subra said, “and these people will not be allowed to go back to their homes.”

“The water is contaminated… There are other volatile comments besides methane,” Brockovich asserted Tuesday, listing the devastating issues making this event historic. 

“Jindal was supposed to be there this week, but now he’s planning to be there next week,” she said.

“It’s actually very eerie out there,” Brockovich told HuffPo.

“It’s very pretty,” she said, soon following with, “You can actually see bubbles of gas there.”

The reason it is eerie is that it is still so beautiful, but one knows it is a high-risk danger zone, including being highly contaminated now.

“It’s really tranquil and it’s really sad that’s gone,” she said.

Asked about residents being able to return some day, Brockovich said, “They’re not going to get to go back.”

In the October 31, 1988 issue of the New York Times, Keith Schneider’s article stated, “Engineers at the Energy Department have privately begun calling such contaminated sites ‘national sacrifice zones.’”

Gov. Bobby Jindal told a large group of officials on Monday in Baton Rouge that he is pressuring the company being blamed for the sacrifice zone, Texas Brine LLC, to buy all of the properties there.

Salon noted about the Energy Dept. engineers, “They grimly joke that some zones could turn out to be larger than many of the 39 national parks.” 

Sacrifice zones in America are areas “offered up for exploitation in the name of profit, progress, and technological advancement,” according to Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges and award-winning cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco who began researching these zones in 2010.

“Now we have to turn that fear into realization that the spreading of sacrifice zones will absorb us all unless radical change comes soon,” wrote David Swanson, author, anti-war activist and War Is a Crime blogger. 

(See: La. Sinkhole National Sacrifice Zone)

“We have people dying,” Brockovich said, referring to people suffering across the nation, abused by Big Energy’s chemicals.  

(See: The Fracked Faulkner Cover-up: House Explosions, Suicides, Miscarriages)

Over 4000 communities around the country are experiencing severe environmental destruction, according to Brockovich.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama has expressed his intent to expand drilling for gas and oil, inevitably expanding the nation’s sacrifice zones.

“The entire nation is in an environmental crisis,” Brockovich said Tuesday.

Sources: Huffington Post, New York Times, War Is A Crime

Photo Credits: ABC News, Ventanos. Oceano Chile, Vimeo

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