Chinchilla, rural to industrial

Gas well

Like many people from Chinchilla, Karen Auty escaped the city lifestyle in 2007 to live in a rural community free of pollution. Like others she was not perturbed when gas mining started in the area as she knew it had operated for many years further west at Roma.

Now Karen is an anti-CSG campaigner after seeing the affects it has had on her community. She has learnt about the mining process and how it is very different from the conventional gas mined at Roma. She has talked to people from the surrounding areas and has seen how CSG has adversely impacted their lives. The area most affected is Tara where there are small blocks of land and the industry has been operating for ten years. People, particularly children, are having higher than usual health issues, headaches, respiratory problems, bleeding noses and ears and a cancer cluster is suspected. People living within a 20km radius of the infrastructure are the most affected. The properties have lost their value making it difficult for anyone living there to freely move to a safer environment for their children or closer to better medical facilities if needed.

The gas fields are creeping closer to Hopeland, an area of prime agricultural land with fertile black soil and large productive and profitable farms. These farmers believe their land can feed us for hundreds of years while gas can only be guaranteed for ten to thirty years. Water is a major concern as levels of bores have dropped and some dams are no longer holding water.

Chinchilla, once a thriving rural town, had booming businesses and a robust housing market for three years while the gas facilities were being built. The town water supply went down to 23% and local infrastructure, such as roads deteriorated due to the impacts of huge trucks. Now, the construction phase is over. Rental properties abound and houses cannot be sold. However, the town reservoir is full, continually topped up with treated water originating in the coal seams.

This rural community is divided between people who believe gas development is good for the area and those who don’t. The pro-gas people usually work in the industry or benefit financially from it in some way. Many of the anti-gas people have been directly affected by it with either health issues, noise from nearby infrastructure or the difficulties of running a farm with outside interference. It has divided the community and some families.

Fourteen known suicides in 2014 and eleven to date this year indicate the level of mental illness in the area. The suicides were from a cross section of the community but were all male.

Signs for feedlot and re-injection facility

After driving around the area today I can see how this area would have offered people and ideal rural lifestyle as the land, even a small block in the worst area, would support a few cattle. But in some areas the gas infrastructure dominates the landscape and the noise is loud and constant, turning it into an industrial area. Infrastructure and feedlots are side by side. Treated waste water is used to irrigate crops fed to the cattle and they drink it too.

The infrastructure includes wells with pipes to field compressor stations, pipes from these to a central processing plant where the water and gas are separated. The gas is piped to the coast and vents at regular intervals release any remaining water. Meanwhile the water is piped to a reverse osmosis treatment facility where salts and chemicals are removed. The treated water is then used by local farmers or businesses and the remaining salts and chemicals are put in ‘transfer dams’ (see yesterday’s blog). Today I saw a permeate re-injection pilot plant which reinjects the waste water back into the earth. The sign says the ‘site contains a hazardous area’ and yet the sign next to it is for a feedlot.

All pipes containing water have vents at regular intervals to allow gas to escape. Pipes are buried underground but a wide area of land needs to be cleared to give the machinery room to move. Once the pipeline is buried sign posts indicate where they are buried. Locals are worried about subsidence around the pipelines and if this will affect the joins.

Re-injection facility

The gas companies boast that their industry has a small footprint on the landscape. From what I have seen today that is not true. It has turned a thriving rural community into an industrial area with all the related social problems of drugs, crime and poor health. Tax payers will be paying for this for many years to come.

When doing a u-turn near infrastructure I drove through an innocuous looking puddle and the front wheels sunk into mud. I tried to reverse out but didn’t push, it afraid of sinking in deeper. Luckily a mine safe ute came along and a guy and a girl in QGC branded clothing pushed us out. I told them I was from NSW – obvious from my number plates – and that I was having a look around at the gas fields. Curiously, they turned around and went back in the direction they had come from.

I interviewed Karen and a transcript will be available at a later date.