The crisis involving the Bayou Corne sinkhole in Louisiana just doesn't stop. In what's becoming an almost daily headline, the sinkhole grew again, swallowing up more trees and even part of an access road:
A 1,500 square-foot section caved in from the edge of a sinkhole in Assumption Parish Tuesday night and pulled down several trees and part of an access road, parish officials said Wednesday.
The road was built to park excavators used in pending cleanup of the sinkhole, which emerged Aug. 3 in swamps between the Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou areas on property owned by Texas Brine Co., parish officials said in a blog post.
The 4-acre sinkhole has seen periodic edge collapses, or sloughing off, and has gradually become wider as the saturated soil on the edge falls into the slurry hole. Estimates before the most recent collapse put the width at 475 feet.
The continued growth of the sinkhole, which is about 70 miles west of New Orleans, is not surprising at this point. But the deteriorating situation raises the stakes that residents might be exposed to known carcinogens or elevated levels of radiation that have been found in the sinkhole, which ...