The Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, postponed until October 11 a decision granting environmental approval to the Gladstone and Curtis Island liquefied natural projects. A spokesman said the delay would allow Mr Garrett to obtain more information on the impact of the projects, which the Queensland government approved this year. The Basin Sustainability Alliance said Mr […]
Mr Hutcheon says it was wrong for the Queensland Government to conditionally approve the project in the first place.
“The Queensland Government gave provisional approval for these developments without knowing the answer to that question as to whether the Great Artesian Basin would be impacted,” he said.
“A spark ignited the natural gas that had collected in the basement of Richard and Thelma Payne’s suburban Cleveland home, shattering windows, blowing doors 20 feet from their hinges and igniting a small fire in a violent flash. The Paynes were jolted out of bed, and their house lifted clear off the ground.”
Queensland has always struggled to regulate mining and with shaky environmental approval for the state’s biggest mining project, nothing seems to be changing, writes Drew Hutton. The mining industry is a law unto itself.
The highly productive Darling Downs includes areas such as Felton, Haystack, Acland and Wandoan have the best topsoil you are likely to see outside of the Ganges Delta, as well as being more intensively settled. They are set to be sacrificed to what Guy Pearse calls “King Coal” — and the Queensland Government is doing all it can to facilitate this trend.
But while King Coal might be receiving plenty of attention there is another key player in the Queensland mining sector that is subject to less scrutiny: the coal seam gas industry.
The Australian Labor Government is utterly incorrect in its repeated assertion that “natural gas is clean energy”. The truth is otherwise – natural gas is dirty energy and on combustion is twice as carbon dioxide (CO2) polluting as brown coal.
http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=1052462 How’s this for a raw deal? A big company marches onto your land, sinks a well without your permission and then proceeds to threaten your livelihood. And it does it all with the consent and approval of the government. Now this would be bad enough if it was happening halfway across the world in […]
WHY do landholders appear to have so little power in negotiations with mining companies, when key sections of the Queensland Petroleum and Gas Act 2004 emphasise protection of landholder interests?
“The Minister has not set guidelines, so they (petroleum companies) have had a free run in how they consult with land-owners, if at all.”
“The Minister is giving the industry the exemption to do whatever it likes by failing to set guidelines.”
An article from the U.S. – but it could be talking about the Darling Downs in Qld.
“It all happened too quickly, Volz said. “What was the rush?” he asked rhetorically.
“You would have thought we would have learned our lesson,” he said, referring to the state’s legacy of pollution problems with coal and other minerals.”
A lot of farmers are worried about the long term impact of industrial development on prime farmland and on water supplies, and whether local and State authorities are really up to the task of managing those risks. Wayne Newton says no one can tell farmers what the impact will be after thousands of square kilometres of coal seams are dewatered.
A falsely ‘happy’ look at a booming csg industry – lots of jobs and money, but only for the very short-term – and will a “waterless wasteland” be left behind?
Count on resource boom, but not all its benefits