Twenty-six Pilliga residents returned yesterday from a fact-finding tour of Queensland’s coal seam gas (CSG) fields.
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Members of the group said the trip had strengthened their resolve to block the proposed Santos Narrabri Gas Project planned for the Pilliga State Forest.
The group, predominantly farmers from the Narrabri area, inspected CSG infrastructure and spoke with Queenslanders living in and around gas fields.
They visited Tara, Chinchilla, Roma, Injune, and surrounding areas.
The group’s concerns included potential impacts to groundwater, the environment, division in rural communities and an uneven economic boom.
“We are not radical greenies,” Mullaley landowner Robin King said.
“We are conservative people who’ve voted National most of our lives, but the more we learn about CSG the more we find it unacceptable.
“Governments are not protecting food-growing regions and we feel deserted.”
The group inspected gas fields such as Santos’ Fairview north-east of Roma.
Group members said the extent of the infrastructure, which covered a large area of land, and the chemicals and processes involved, had convinced them CSG and agriculture could not coexist.
At a gathering at Cameby Hall near Chinchilla, the north-west farmers were urged to “just say no”.
Chinchilla locals told the farmers that CSG companies were “dishonest” and “manipulated landowners”.
One landowner told the Liverpool Plains farmers “once you let them in, it’s a survival game”.
Chinchilla landowner John Jenkyn told the visitors locals could not drink the water.
However, Santos and the industry’s peak body said CSG was safe and could co-exist with agriculture.
Gunnedah Shire Councillor David Quince cited the Great Artesian Basin Protection Group survey of three million hectares of North-West NSW which found a 96 per cent disapproval rating for CSG and said the trip had confirmed his negative views.
“This is not a democracy any more,” he said, “This is a country run by the multi-nationals”.
Dr Hugh Barrett, Narrabri:
“We met many QLD locals genuinely traumatised by the impacts of the coal seam gas industry. The massive scale of the coal seam gas developments in QLD is shocking.
“The gas drillers start in a State Forest, then consume surrounding country and communities with wells, compressor stations, pipelines, roads, huge dams, treatment plants and workers’ camps.
“The noise, the smells and the 24-hour operations all became very real to us.
“We now realise coal seam gas fields would have enormous and disturbing ramifications for Narrabri. Starting in the Pilliga forest is only the thin edge of the wedge, providing a foothold before invading surrounding farmland with gasfield infrustucture.”
Victoria Hamilton, Wee Waa:
“Now, having personally witnessed established and expanding coal seam gas fields, we who travelled to the Queensland gasfields are all more convinced and determined to prevent a similar invasion in the Narrabri region.”