New regulations restrict coal seam gas (CSG) companies from residential housing areas in NSW, but do little to protect the rural landscape.
NSW planning minister Brad Hazzard announced on October 3 that the NSW government had implemented a string of new regulations to try to control growing CSG demands in NSW.
“We have put in place the toughest CSG controls in Australia,” Hazzard said.
The new regulations place a two-kilometre exclusion zone on any new CSG activity from residential housing.
Big gas companies Dart Energy and AGL were hit hardest by the announced changes, having to withdraw exploration licences with an estimated potential value of over $400 million.
Under the new regulations, all CSG proposals will also be subject to the scrutiny of an additional “gateway panel” of six scientific experts.
Although the new legislation represents a step toward controlling CSG development in NSW, growth of the industry looks set to continue. Concerns have also been raised over the ability of the regulations to protect vital rural landscape around the state.
Will D’Arcy from community group Stop CSG Sydney Water Catchment, says the new legislation is welcome news for some city residents, but will do little to protect rural land falling just outside the buffer zone.
“My house is two kilometres from a residential area, and is part of Sydney’s water catchment, there is nothing stopping a CSG company from applying for a drilling licence here,” D’Arcy said.
Similar concerns have been raised by the NSW Farmers Association (NSWFA), which is disappointed that the new legislation will do little to protect important agricultural land in rural NSW.
NSWFA President Fiona Simson has expressed doubts over the ability of the government’s proposed gateway panel to protect agricultural land.
"If the panel is not empowered to recommend that a particular project should not proceed, their expertise and experience are not being fully utilised,” she told the Australian on October 3.
Most of NSW’s big CSG operators will remain unscathed by the recent legislation change. Companies including Santos are set to undertake a large scale project in the north of the state. In August, the NSW government granted the Australian CSG mining giant approval for eight new wells in the Pilliga forest near Narrabri.
There are now concerns surrounding the project, and environmental groups say Santos has provided no real waste management plan to accommodate the large amounts of contaminated water that need to be extracted for the process.
Wilderness Society campaign manager Naomi Hogan said: “Santos has already pleaded guilty to a huge toxic spill of coal seam gas waste water including heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and chromium, and it still can’t stop more leaks from one of its waste-water holding ponds.”
Groundwater ecologist Peter Serov said in a statement: “Santos have admitted that they will be drilling coal seam gas wells right through the recharge aquifers of the Great Artesian Basin yet there has been no rigorous studies conducted of groundwater dependent ecosystems in the Pilliga.”
The NSW government is under huge public pressure to restrict CSG growth, but Queensland does not have similar laws.
In the rural Queensland region of Tara, residents near Origin Energy's "Ironbark" coal seam gas project have reported a “toxic black rain” has “rained down over thousands of acres, contaminating bushland, farmland and domestic water supplies, [and] is accompanied by feelings of nausea, skin and eye irritation, and chronic lethargy.”
A Queensland Department of Health report into similar complaints in March found “no clear link between CSG activities and residents’ health complaints”.
Tara locals, however, are adamant that the report is inconclusive, reporting daily symptoms such as headaches and bleeding noses to be a direct result of CSG pollution.