Updated: Mar 09, 2013 10:37 PM CST
ASSUMPTION PARISH, LA (WAFB) -
Relief is a word frequently heard around the Assumption Parish sinkhole, but as Bayou Corne residents will tell you, it’s not a word they use to describe their attitudes. But now the now 8-and-a half acre sinkhole has caught the attention of California based environmentalist Erin Brockovich.
On Saturday, hundreds of Bayou Corne residents packed into a community meeting to hear what Brockovich and California based attorney Tom Girardi plan to do to help them out.
“Kind of curious to see what was going to be said. And everything they saying right now today, I’ve been saying since this started,” said Ernest Boudreaux, a Bayou Corne resident.
Since last August, 350 people in the Bayou Corne community have been displaced from their homes—- ordered out under an evacuation order.
“It’s not as easy as people say. Just because they giving you $875 to jump up and run and go live another life and forget about that,” said Boudreaux. “That’s what we worked for what we’ve got over there.”
A group of those residents contacted Girardi and Brockovich to get help and answers.
“They want to know the truth. They care about their families. They don’t want to be placed in danger. They wait around in hopes that their community can work with the company, and that company will do something right by them,” said Brockovich.
Read more: http://www.wafb.com
Erin Brockovich takes on sinkhole case
BY ROBERT STEWART
Advocate staff writer
March 10, 2013
PIERRE PART — Environmental activist Erin Brockovich told a group of Bayou Corne residents on Saturday that standing up and taking legal action against the company that owns a failed salt dome cavern believed to have caused the Assumption Parish sinkhole is the only way they will find relief from the emergency.
“For those of you who are there, I want you to really consider your safety and why you’re there,” she said. “For those of you who have left, it is time to stand up and say, individually, as a community, as this homeowner, ‘I’m going to take some action,’ and that’s why we’re here.”
Brockovich delivered her remarks during a community meeting at the American Legion Hall on La. 70 in Pierre Part, where she and Los Angeles lawyers Thomas V. Girardi and Bob Bowcock fielded a litany of legal questions from the standing-room-only crowd.
The sinkhole was discovered Aug. 3 in a swampland area between Bayou Corne and Grand Bayou. About 350 residents nearby remain under evacuation orders.
Scientists believe the failure of a Texas Brine Co. LLC cavern caused the sinkhole and related developments, including release of crude oil as well as natural gas bubbling up in nearby bayous.
Girardi, with whom Brockovich has worked for years, has been retained by at least 50 homeowners in the Bayou Corne community.
Brockovich was portrayed by actress Julia Roberts in the 2000 feature film “Erin Brockovich,” which tells the story of Brockovich’s fight against a California power plant in the exposure of nearby residents to contaminated ground water.
Read more: http://theadvocate.com/
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