Not pretty … farmer Tony Pickard in the contaminated Pilliga woodland in north-western NSW, where coal seam gas companies are drilling. Photo: Jacky Ghossein
THE coal seam gas company Santos has admitted more than a dozen instances of pollution occurred at drilling sites in the Pilliga woodland in north-west NSW, many of them not reported to the government in an apparent breach of environmental monitoring rules.
A damning report released by the company found that the site's previous operator, Eastern Star Gas, had made serial breaches of environmental rules in contradiction of many of its public statements about environmental protection.
It identified 16 spills or leaks of contaminated water in addition to the four it had already acknowledged, and recorded work practices riddled with errors and casual mistakes.
The Herald visited the site yesterday and saw first-hand swathes of skeletal, dead trees and discoloured earth that contrasted sharply with the surrounding bushland, which is regarded as the greatest remaining temperate woodland in eastern Australia.
''The public shouldn't accept what has happened here, and neither do we,'' Santos's vice-president for eastern Australia, James Baulderstone, said.
Brisbane Times
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