| 2303-063 |
Coal Slurry |
Coal must be washed with water and processed with a variety of chemicals before it is used. This creates a slurry which is stored in temporary earthen dams across the end of a valley called impoundments. On numerous occasions, impoundments have failed, releasing large quantities of the toxic mixture to devastate the valley below. |
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| 2343-108 |
Wharf Pilings |
The Grand Ecaille sulphur mine site was known as the mine that couldn’t be built because it was covered by 150 feet of quicksand and marsh and inhabitated by vast hordes of mosquitos. Humans persevered and extracted the suphur over 40 years.
These pilings are the remains of a wharf built as a transit point between the mine and a 10-mile canal carved through the marsh to the Mississippi River.
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| 2347-061 |
Bauxite waste from aluminum production |
Producing aluminum metal involves refining bauxite (the ore) using caustic chemicals to produce alumina and the electrolytic reduction of alumina to produce aluminum. This depicts the disposal of the byproducts, in which the solids (mostly impurities in the bauxite) are separated from the liquids. |
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| 2293-005 |
Mountain top removal |
Dramatic boundary between mined area and unmined land. |
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| 2300-095 |
River Of Coal |
Cross section of a mountain that shows the seams of coal, and the layers of extraction. The small white mounds of earth are drill holes, into which ammonium nitrate is poured for blasting down to the next seam. The absence of drilling machines or any other machines indicates that a blast is imminent. Each year, an average of 4 people are killed by fly rock from these blasts. |
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| 2430-004 |
Abandoned Industrial Site |
Dismantled industrial site. |
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| 2430-077 |
Dredge Spoil Area |
This is a man-made island in the middle of the Houston ship channel, one of the largest petro-chemical ports in the world, onto which the material is pumped when they dredge the bottom of the harbor. Anything that settles to the bottom of the harbor is then deposited here. It is surrounded by chemical plants, refineries, and all manner of industries that use the waterway as a convenient dumping place. |
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| 2431-382 |
Rainbow refraction in liquid jetting from pipe |
Petroleum coke is the final remainder of refining oil, which can be cooked to become asphalt, or other industrial products. This shows a rainbow refraction in liquid jetting from a pipe surrounded by coke. |
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| 2831-094 |
Flame from stack with heat distortion |
This plant, built in 1957, was the first polyethylene plant to be built in Louisiana. It makes HDPE for use in Tupperware, laundry detergent bottles, and milk cartons.
Polypropylene made there is used for food packaging, ropes, textiles, plastic parts and reusable containers of various types.
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| 2836-046 |
Footprint of dismantled tanks |
These are the remains of the tanks at the wharf where the mine canal met the river (10 miles from the mine), removed after being damaged by Hurricane Katrina. |
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