Great Artesian Basin Protection Group

PIP COURTNEY: Farmers see the coal seam gas industry as one of the Queensland Government’s most pressing environmental challenges.

DREW WAGNER, AGFORCE, QLD: This is impacting on productive agricultural land, it’s impacting on a food resource that has been generated in perpetuity and can continue to do so. Some of these gas wells have a very, very short life span. We don’t know what is going to be left after they’ve actually been removed from the environment because you may not be able to put it back to what it once was.

PIP COURTNEY: The big unknown here is water. The gas company’s problem is what to do with the 286,000 mega litres of salty water 20,000 wells will produce annually. Farmers fear their land could be ruined by the millions of tonnes of salt that’s to be brought to the surface.

UNKNOWN VOICE: The philosophy of both the Government and the resource companies seems to be oh well, we’ll get on and exploit the resource and we’ll worry about the salt later.

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2010/s2894275.htm

No Comments »