A chemical plant (oil and other fuel additives as well as plastic container manufacturing) blew up 3 miles from my house/ food forest in Louisiana. It literally rained a black oily unknown substance all over the entire community.

Government officials are seemingly working to cover up the dangers and health risks. Nobody as of yet knows what is in this stuff other than that its “mostly” oil, but presumably lots of other chemicals as well. Waiting to hear from neighbors what independent lab testing shows. We didn’t get the worst of the “black rain” like some people who got completely covered, but are still worried about what did get on our plants, in the water and soil, etc… are thinking of just abandoning the property which has been in the family since the 1800’s. The oil plant sits in the recharge zone of the huge Southern Hills aquifer that supplies most of SE Louisiana above the saltwater line with drinking water.. Oil in the river i grew up fishing on.. Anyways I keep thinking maybe I can do some sort of massive bioremediation effort using fungi, mostly because its so hard to let go of the land I grew up on and 10 years of work planting and maintaining a food forest all on my own.. but part of me feels that its hopeless and not worth getting cancer, which we were probably already at risk of before the explosion.. if we leave I will essentially have nothing. Lots of big farms around me are proceeding with business as usual because they haven’t planted their fall crops yet and because the EPA and DEQ are acting like its no big deal. It could be cool to move to a community of like-minded permaculture people instead of living in a poisoned town with people who are openly proud of being in the KKK.. but I don’t know where to start. Went WWOOFing one summer and it was a total bust/scam most of the time.. worked like a slave for meager meals and learned very little other than not to blindly trust people that claim to be permaculturists. I think it will be hard to sell the land, especially after this event. The lot across the street from us has been on the market for the last 10 years or longer.

For bioremediation I am thinking remove topsoil and vegetation, mix with woodchips, inoculate with fungi and let it do it thing, then later compost it all and test to determine if its safe to spread.

The good news is.. well we no longer have a chemical plant 3 miles from our house.

Thoughts?