NSW Greens agriculture spokesman Jeremy Buckingham writes to assure readers that the party will continue to hold the Coalition to account of coal and coal seam gas mining.
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For many years the gas industry has claimed there is no evidence that unconventional gas drilling pollutes water resources. However, more and more cases of contamination are being exposed.
Coal seam gas operations near Narrabri led to the contamination of an aquifer with salt and heavy metals, including uranium 20 times the drinking water limit.
A Queensland government report found gas bubbling to the surface in the Condamine River was sourced from a coal seam that had been drilled and fracked nearby.
Two weeks ago in Western Sydney, residents called the fire brigade following a leak from a coal seam gas well.
A court recently ordered the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection to release reports that documented 243 cases of water-well contamination due to drilling and fracking for unconventional gas.
The reports show multiple instances of water wells contaminated by gas drilling, with chemicals and heavy metals such as chlorides, aluminium, arsenic, barium and strontium at levels which are “dangerous to human health”.
There are also numerous examples of methane levels in water supplies being so high that the authorities warned residents that “there is a physical danger of explosion due to the migration of natural gas into water wells or through soils into dwellings”.
Clearly co-existence between this toxic industry and agriculture is a high-risk strategy but it is one that Nationals leader Andrew Stoner is eager to push ahead with as the Coalition government has introduced policy after policy which favours their big coal and gas mates over regional communities.
The Strategic Regional Land Use Policy has allowed mining on our best agricultural land with the Chinese government’s Shenhua Watermark coalmine on the verge of approval in the heart of the Liverpool Plains.
The “gateway process” is a hole in the fence rather than a gateway, so mines are progressing despite failing the majority of assessment criteria.
The Aquifer Interference regulation is a toothless policy that acts as a “guide” to decision makers and is ignored by miners.
Critical Industry Clusters were created to protect centres of agriculture from mining, but the government has ignored rice, citrus, cotton, sugar and dairy farmers who have all indicated they want this limited protection.
The current government may think they can fool rural and regional people with spin and half-baked policies, but The Greens will continue to hold The Nationals and Liberals to account because we believe that farms should come before coal and gas.
