The Conservation Council of WA is calling for a moratorium on hydrolic fracture stimulation, or fraccing, until it says adequate approval and monitoring processes for the practice are put in place.
The Council says under current environmental regulations the State Government is basically experimenting with WA's ground water.
The Department of Mines and Petroleum says hydrolic fracture stimulation was first used in WA in 1958 and since then over 700 well stimulations have been completed.
Put simply, fraccing uses high pressure, a mix of water and chemicals, to fracture rock formations. The fractures are then held open, typically with sand or ceramic beads, which allows the gas trapped in the rock formations to be more easily extracted.
Piers Verstegen is the Director of the Conservation Council of WA.
He says landowners should be aware of the environmental risks associated with gas fraccing.
"We're talking about a practice, which in other places, in other parts of the world, has been know to contaminate ground water with chemicals and gas and particularly in Western Australia where we're so reliant on it for our farm production and for drinking we really need to be protecting those ground water assets."
ABC Rural
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