It is hard to see how Coal-Seam Gas (CSG) exploration and extraction could continue unimpeded following the release of the Senate’s Interim report: the impact of mining coal seam gas on the management of the Murray Darling Basin on Thursday November 30. I have always been concerned like many farmers that vital food production would take a back seat to mining and CSG interests and the royalties that State governments would derive from CSG extraction. In NSW the former ALP government issued exploration licences with gay abandon leaving a huge mess for the current Stoner/O’Farrell government to fix.
I watched the documentary movie Gasland which chronicles the environmental disaster of the reckless extractive processes of CSG in the USA and I reckon it rivals the environmental chemical mess left after the fall of the former German Democratic Republic. Naturally there would be no one in Australia that would want to follow the USA on this one, although I am not convinced our CSG industries are behaving in such an environmentally negligent fashion. We need mining very much, but we need productive food-producing farmland and fresh water more. In our region, landowners had felt intimidated and patronised even betrayed by CSG (specifically Eastern Star Gas) company employees and board members. I know this to be true.
Tamworth City News
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