image: stoppress.com.au
Over the past few months, a little film Gasland has been doing a round of screenings on the Sunshine Coast and Brisbane and drawing good crowds. It tells the story of American banjo player and filmmaker Josh Fox’s gradual discovery of the ominous extent of the underground gas industry in the US, how it had somehow, during the George W Bush/Dick Cheney era managed to make itself exempt from The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and other protective legislation.
Click the image to watch the video on YouTube
It tells of groundwater so contaminated with gas that it could be ignited with a cigarette lighter and of the toxic nature of many of the chemicals used to fracture underground rock and allow gas to move to the surface. It alarmingly portrayed the health impacts from both air and water pollution by the more than 500 chemicals in the fracking fluid (or fraccing), many of which enter groundwater or even become airborne when contaminated water (the industry calls it “produced water”, it sounds nicer) is misted to enhance evaporation.
The film had won a major documentary award at the Sundance Film Festival. Its pre-publicity described it as “incredibly inspiring”. I found it ominous and disturbing. While all the audience were horrified at the American situation, there was a dangling question as to what was happening right here, in southeast Queensland.
It seemed the best way to find out was to do exactly what Josh Fox had done…. hit the road, a three-day information-gathering and film-making trip that my daughter Arkin and I hoped would shed some light on the local situation.
First stop was Kingaroy, the agricultural hub of the South Burnett. We caught up with John and Therese Dalton who live 10 minutes drive out of Kingaroy and adjacent to the Cougar Energy Trial Underground Coal Gasification plant, UGC as we would come to know it.
The Cougar operation had just been shut down by the QLD’s Environmental Protection Agency. We needed to know the background.
John and Therese put us up in their beautiful strawbale cottage and while the full moon rose over the expansive Kingaroy skyline John outlined the local situation. He explained that the Cougar operation involved burning coal underground and collecting the gas produced and that, being a “trial”, it had not even required an Environmental Impact Assessment.
While the potential was there to burn some 20 000 tonnes of coal in a deposit that reached right to the outskirts of Kingaroy, the plant, after months of setting up, only actually ran for five days before it was stopped by John described as a “catastrophic incident”.
There is mixed scientific opinion as to whether this was an explosion or an underground collapse, but the result was that benzene and toluene found their way into the groundwater as well as into the fatty tissue of cattle grazing nearby. The EPA has stepped in and ordered the mine to shut down although Cougar Energy has appealed this decision.
John’s neighbour Damien O’Sullivan explained his incredulity at finding that the Environmental Protection Agency had approved the trial without even having visited the site. He explained that the underground coal gasification process had even been banned in the US and described it as “a dirty filthy process which should not be used”.
Although the Cougar operation had been stopped, listening to both John and Damien didn’t exactly fill us with confidence about the role of the state’s Environmental Protection Agency. It was as if they’d been asked to look the other way! I couldn’t help feeling that Cougar might have been a sort of sacrificial lamb and bigger operations might be causing problems elsewhere.
Further west, particularly around Tara and Chinchilla , a different process, CSG, coal seam gas, was moving from the exploratory stage into production. I’d interviewed Friends of the Earth campaigner Drew Hutton after the Gasland screening in Maleny and he’d sent shivers down my spine when he told me that the situation in Australia, southeast Queensland in particular, was every bit as alarming as what had been portrayed in Josh Fox’s film.
Drew had set up an office just north of Tara, some 300km west of Brisbane, and was predicting that coal seam gas and underground coal gasification would become the biggest environmental campaign in Australia’s history,
Outside Tara we caught up with Michael Bretherick who’s part of the Western downs Alliance, strong local opposition to the under-regulated spread of the coal-seam gas industry. He told us that locals were engaged in a confrontation with the British Gas-owned QGC that intends to establish a gas field on the Tara rural residential estates, home to more than 2,000 people.
We drove past QGC’s huge headquarters, offices and Camp on the old Kenya station not far from Tara and realised the enormity of what was being rolled out.
The massive activity in coal seam gas harvesting is being felt at diverse locations across Australia. For that reason, Drew and Michael and others are organising a convergence of support in the Tara Showgrounds on the Labour Day long weekend at the start of May.
As we headed home I reflected on the last three days, the rich agricultural country we’d travelled through, and the new conflicts posed by its lying above underground coal and gas, and all that that entailed.
We’d focussed on gas but I couldn’t help thinking of the people of Felton, south of Toowoomba or Aldershot near Maryborough facing the prospect of new open cut coalmines. The night after we arrived home, ABC’s Four Corners went to air with a full program The Gas rush devoted to coal seam gas, CSG, both around Tara and Chinchilla and in the Hunter Valley.
I’d been right to have an uneasy sense of foreboding after I’d first watched Gasland. In fact Josh Fox had been to Australia to film a piece for inclusion in the forthcoming Gasland 2. The American experience, chronicled so disturbingly in Gasland- and echoed in another film Split Estate, looked soon to be rolled out over many parts of Australia.
Four Corners had shown dropping well levels, bubbling gas… the longer-term health effects of fracking fluids would take longer to show up. But then Damien’s cattle had shown benzene and toluene in their fat after a relatively short exposure. The consequences would be dire –for both present and future generations, an enduring millstone left as a legacy for short term financial and political gain.
And that’s exactly why an unlikely alliance of farmers and environmentalists are joining together to advocate Lock the Gate. If Drew Hutton is right it’ll be the largest environment campaign in Australia’s history.
Tara convergence details
When: Fri 29th of April – Tues 4th of May 2011
Where: Tara Showgrounds (300km west of Brisbane)
What: 4 days of workshops, forums, displays, entertainment and direct action
How: to register your interest or for more details.Email tara2011@lockthegate.org.au or phone 07 4669 4864
About the Author
Ian is a regular contributor to ECO and has been active in Conondale Range and Mary River campaigns and is long-standing president of the Conondale Range Committee. He is also a Life Member of SCEC.
Arkin’s photography was an essential ingredient of the campaign to stop the now-defunct Traveston Crossing Dam and was recognised when she received a special Environment Award in 2009.
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