A COMMUNITY meeting will be held to find and inform Liverpool Plains farmers affected by the proposed $1 billion Hunter Queensland Gas Pipeline.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Many farmers are only just discovering what they negotiated in 2009 with Hunter Gas Pipeline, the company behind the project, is not what was approved by the state government.
Quirindi farmer Peter Wills knows about 30 landholders have been contacted through the "bush telegraph", but he believes the problem stretches much further.
READ MORE
"We're telling everyone to pass it on to your neighbour," Mr Wills said.
"I haven't encountered anyone yet who is fully aware of the actual route, or the project in general.
"There are a lot of people that are not aware of what was resolved at the end of the planning process."
It's been more than eight years since Hunter Gas Pipeline contacted landholders in the region, and Mr Wills said there was a "shortage of information".
"The company hasn't kept landholders up to date," he said.
"They sent 1500 pages to the government and three pages to my dad.
"We're telling landholders to contact the company, or the former landholder, and request all the correspondence, so you can see what was sent to you and what was negotiated."
The state government recently granted the 700-kilometre project a five-year extension.
Mr Wills said given the project was first approved more than a decade ago, a lot of the land along the pipeline route had changed, which would lead to land-use conflict.
"This whole project needs to be revisited. They should have never extended it for five years, because so much has changed along the route," he said.
"There are going to be huge conflict issues."
Mr Wills said the meeting would also discuss what lessons could be learnt from the landholder unity shown by Coonamble farmers, who stopped the APA gas pipeline from travelling through their region.
"Their action all took place before the project was approved, so it's a different situation, but it still shows the power of unity," Mr Wills said.
"In Coonamble, they negotiated as a group rather than individually.
"In the end, APA couldn't put it anywhere because they all looked out for their neighbour."
The meeting will take place at the Quirindi RSL on Saturday, February 8, at 2pm.