Thread: Larto/Saline

Originally Posted by ole evinrude

While having heard all kinds of rumors including that they already have been pumping water out of Larto, I DO have some serious questions about this...
I'm quite familiar with the whole area and for anyone to pump out of Larto to the Delta, they would have to cross the Diversion canal first,then the Diversion Canal Levee, best I can tell by going over a couple of 4 foot square ariel maps of the area I have, it would be somewhere between 3000 and 400o feet form the edge of Larto Lake in a straight line across the canal and levee to the Delta property!!!!!!!!!!! that folks is over a half mile!!!!!!!!! and you would have to cross the canal AND the levee as the Levee Board will NOT allow anyone to bore thru the levee!!!!!!!
Now I'm also familiar with rice farming and pumps and to have pumps big enough and diesel engines big enough for the job, your talking serious $$$$$... A lot cheaper and easier solution to get water to flood the rice fields would be to put in water wells at the fields!!!!! I just don't see anyone pumping water over 1/2 mile,over a canal and over a levee from Larto Lake to the Delta....and if they tried it,it would have to be piped at least over the canal and levee,can you imagine how big a pipe line would be needed to carry enough water to do any good????

Now on to the low water condition.....well, it's july and the water is always low in july....you will lose one inch of water every 3 days just to evaporation!!!!!!!!! and the wier is leaking,AGAIN, don't know how much,but if it is at the same rate as evaporation, then in one month your looking at the water level going down about 20 inches or more,so in the last 30 days, the water would be down about 2 feet below pool stage and that is exactly what the gauges show.....nothing unusual for this time of the year,I've seen it a lot lower in the middle of the summer and the weir was not leaking........

They are not pumping into the delta. That is on the north side. They are pumping out of Saline to the southern fields. The reason they cant drill water wells is because of all the waste water that was produced by all the wells that were drilled years ago.

o-k, that makes sense........... the rumors are going on like an out of control forest fire!!!!!!!!! one guy that has a camp on Larto was saying they were pumping right out of Larto!!!!!!!

I am not sure I understand. I guess you are talking about injection wells that they were pumping the saltwater into instead of getting vac trucks to haul it off. I know some of those well have been there since the 50's and 60's and I guess they weren't worried about running enough casing to cover the usable fresh water. Makes me wonder about the quality of the drinking water in the area.
I have in the past seen on the south end of the Larto, like your headed to "Bean Field" and Vick Hwy there were pumping water right out of Larto to water the cotton across the road.

Originally Posted by Beaubayou

I am not sure I understand. I guess you are talking about injection wells that they were pumping the saltwater into instead of getting vac trucks to haul it off. I know some of those well have been there since the 50's and 60's and I guess they weren't worried about running enough casing to cover the usable fresh water. Makes me wonder about the quality of the drinking water in the area.
I have in the past seen on the south end of the Larto, like your headed to "Bean Field" and Vick Hwy there were pumping water right out of Larto to water the cotton across the road.

Not an oilfield expert by any means. Listening to the people that have lived there all their life, the salt water from the wells were not transported properly. Lots of field lines that carried waste water busted with no urgency to fix them. This was back in the 70's and early 80's from my understanding. I also imagine that the flooding would spread the contaminated water throughout the complex. Again, I wasn't around then, but that seems to be the general idea of the people that I have spoken to. And your right about the drinking water. It is no telling what is in the well water that people use.