Group fights dome plan

• By RICHARD BURGESS
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: Oct 30, 2009 - Page: 1BA

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The deadline is Monday for the public to comment on a company’s plan to discharge billions of gallons of concentrated salt water into the Gulf of Mexico over the next four years to scour out a salt dome in St. Mary Parish to store natural gas.

Some residents have already raised questions about the proposal by Henry Gas Storage and are asking the state Department of Environmental Quality to hold a public hearing on the permit application.

The company has proposed using portions of the salt dome on Cote Blanche Island to create four massive caverns to store natural gas.

To create the caverns, the company proposes to pump water from the Intracoastal Waterway to scour out the salt and then pipe the concentrated salt water that results into the Gulf.

“That’s already a vulnerable and stressed area,” said New Iberia chemist and environmental consultant Wilma Subra, who is working with a group of Franklin-area residents who are questioning the environmental affects of the project.

Subra said the area of the discharge is in the so-called dead zone of the Gulf and could impact oyster beds, which are sensitive to changes in salinity.

“This is much more concentrated than the water they are in,” Subra said.

She also said the volume of the discharge, 10,000 gallons a minute for four years, raises concerns about the build up of trace minerals such as gypsum, which she said could settle on the floor of East Cote Blanche Bay.

Mike McCall, CEO of Ranger Gas Storage, the parent company of Henry Gas Storage, said concerns of gypsum are unfounded because the mineral sits in a “cap” on top of the salt dome and will not be mixed with the saltwater discharge.

“The discharge is going to be basically pure salt water,” he said.

Environmental modeling has found no environmental effects beyond a 400-foot radius at the point 23 miles offshore where the water will be discharged, said Doug LaBar, with Baton Rouge-based environmental engineering firm C-K Associates, which Henry Gas Storage hired to research the project.

He said the concentrated salt water will quickly mix with the surrounding water and the change in salinity will be within natural changes seen in the Gulf.

“Outside the 400-foot radius, there is no impact to water quality,” LaBar said.