"It used to be the most beautiful place on Earth. I thought that I'd die down there." The wistful words of Mike Schaff crackle through the co-pilot headphones as he banks his single-propeller plane to make one last circle over the small jumble of homes and canals deep in the verdant bayou country of Louisiana that he has called home all his life.

Click the image above to enlarge graphic

The burly Mr Schaff, who barely fits in the tight quarters of the cockpit, is not up here to show how the bayous shimmer in the evening light. He has returned, as he has repeatedly in the past year, to view the saucepan-shaped lake that sits to the side of his tiny hamlet of Bayou Corne. "Did they tell you it's still growing?" he asks, before pointing to a faint oil sheen you could only see from up here.

By "they" he means Texas Brine, a Houston company that is grappling with an environmental disaster as frightening as it is unprecedented. The lake is in fact a giant sinkhole that opened up overnight 12 months ago this weekend, swallowing ancient trees whole. Nor has it been quiet since. The hole goes through periodic convulsions, or burps, as methane gas escapes to the surface along with quantities of crude oil. Since appearing, it has expanded from about three acres to some 22.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-way-of-life-on-the-brink-of-extinction-in-the-louisiana-bayous-8744951.html

As one who has seen the movie "Fletch Lives", one can feel a certain uneasiness....

But then instead of a gas pumping station it was the dumping of toxic waste... The result is similar... Environmental degradation. I m prepared to believe that actually this new event is far worse than what "Fletch" had to deal with — dodging bullets in his cool cucumber manner...