Health Impacts of CSG

People living on lifestyle blocks of 30 to 800 acres just out of Tara in Queensland have been impacted the most by the CSG industry. As some of these blocks are off the grid, houses are powered by solar energy. The blocks are mostly too small to produce an income but owners run a few horses or cattle and grow their own vegetables.

‘Adults, who are sensitive receptors, and most children living in this area, have experienced nose bleeds, headaches, sore eyes, skin rashes and in some cases neuropathy,’ said Karen Auty. ‘A three year old boy runs around normally, then suddenly his limbs go limp, like a rag doll, sometimes lasting for 30 seconds or 20 minutes. The same child has lots of nose bleeds. Some people have breathing difficulties, which may bring on asthma, heart attacks or epilepsy which has not been experienced before.’

Noise & Air Pollution

'Beneficial water' is pumped into the dam
 in the distance for irrigation

Karen Auty from Chinchilla describes the noise generated by the infrastructure. ‘A gas well sits in a paddock on an acre or half an acre block of land that has been cleared, fenced and the ground pounded to give vehicles access. A metal box, like a garden shed, sits beside it housing a couple of diesel generators to keep the gas well going. Some of these are quite close to people’s homes. At night it’s very quiet in the bush so the noise is amplified and it doesn’t stop. You can’t turn the television up high enough and when you want to sleep you have to close your windows. Imagine having three or four noisy diesel engines running every night, 24 hours a day at your neighbour’s place. A gas well is a small piece of infrastructure.’

CSG and the governments revolving door

Yesterday the Sydney Morning Herald published and article by investigations editor, Anne Davies, into state and federal governments' staff and politicians moving into the gas industry and senior staff from gas companies moving into advising roles for ministers. Click here 

When I travelled in Queensland this was an issue that was brought up often. It is commonly believed that the gas companies in Queensland wrote the legislation, handed it to the government and they adopted it. Politicians and government staff know the loopholes and how to get legislation through. The rewards offered are staggering, according to one person I met who had been approached by a mining company. If you have no ethics it’s hard to refuse, but they did.

Save North-West NSW video

Lock the Gate's Video on why people do not want Santos drilling for CSG in North-West NSW is worth a look. Read in my blog about what has happened in Chinchilla in Queensland. More coming soon - it gets worse with air and noise pollution, and the human health impacts. Do we want this in NSW? Most people say NO! I recently visited the Santos site in The Pilliga, the recharge area of the Great Artesian Basin. I saw three areas devastated by spills and the project is not fully operational yet! Let's stop it before it is. Keep asking where are all the salts going.

Roads & Litter

CSG mining around Chinchilla has brought an enormous increase in traffic. Thousands of mine safe utes travel on the back roads and the Warrego Highway. Despite improvements to the highway, it now takes longer to travel to Dalby or Brisbane due in part to the speed limit being reduced from 110 kilometres an hour to 100.

‘The road toll went up by 25 percent in one year,’ said Chinchilla resident, Karen Auty. ‘Many others were injured. People are affected forever and that’s a huge unseen cost to the health system. People, unfamiliar with the area, drive after working very long hours, and go off the road. They are not used to kangaroos, emus and pigs jumping out in front of them. We have lots of 457s here. These overseas workers’ driving skills leave a lot to be desired.’

Chinchilla - Boom to Bust

'Beneficial water' from CSG runs into Chinchilla's water supply

The Chinchilla gas boom only lasted about four years, during the construction phase, which is the greatest employer of people. Major infrastructure, such as pipelines, dams, reverse osmosis plants and water and gas separation facilities were built.

House rental prices soared. Prior to the boom rents were stable. A three bedroom house with two bathrooms rented for $250 a week but this went up to $650-$700 a week. The most expensive, a five bedroom, five bathroom purpose built house cost $1,500 a week.

Chinchilla Before CSG

New well pad near Chinchilla

Karen Auty moved to the town of Chinchilla in Queensland’s Darling Downs in 2007. She was familiar with area as relatives lived there. It was a wealthy town surrounded by multimillion dollar cropping farms, watermelon farms and feed lots for beef cattle. The CSG industry was just starting but was not evident.

‘I moved to Chinchilla because house prices were affordable, the schools had a good name and it was a clean, tidy town with good people and clean country air. It had twelve churches and three pubs and a population of around 4,000. It’s the Bible belt, which is good and bad, but the good side is that you have neighbours you can trust. 

Help by Learning About CSG

Drilling rig near Miles, Queensland

I recently drove to Chinchilla in Queensland to find out about the effects of coal seam gas mining on a small country town since production began in 2006. I met Karen Auty, a resident of the town, who knows many people in the area who live on lifestyle blocks, productive farming land and in the town.

I interviewed Karen and am posting her comments along with my observations and research in a series of blogs on CSG education, before and after a gas boom, roads and litter, noise and air pollution, and health impacts, including mental health.

Hopeland Celebrates Gasfields Free Declaration Day

 Lock the Gate’s Drew Hutton, Shay Dougall & farmer Lee McNicholl

The Hopeland community in the Western Downs yesterday celebrated saying NO to coal seam gas (CSG) taking over their farmland, threatening their water supply and ruining their lifestyle.

About 30 locals gathered at a local property where Rev. Graham Slaughter of the Uniting Church accepted the declaration saying a massive 85 per cent of locals did not want the invasive gas.

Irrigation Ring Tank Bursts

Courtesy of John Reid-Carew

An irrigation ring tank has burst its banks, spilling treated water from Origin Energy's CSG mining onto a neighbouring property near Miles in Queensland. Joe Hill, a beef producer who has kept his property gas free (see blog How to Keep Miners Out 2/5/15), spoke to me last week about his concerns that the water his neighbour uses for irrigation may spill onto his property. Now it has.

Joe has just returned from Beef Australia, Australia’s national beef exposition held in Rockhampton where he was thrilled when his cow won Supreme Female of the Angus breed and was third in the Interbreed Champion of Champions. Joe has been breeding Bulliac Angus for over 25 years.

Hopeland Declaration Day

Central Processing Plant

A ten minute drive south of Chinchilla brings you to a small area called Hopeland, bordered by the Condamine River. This area of very old river flats with high quality soil is registered as priority agriculture land, similar to the Lockyer Valley and Liverpool and Cecil Plains. The area produces crops such as cotton, sorghum, chick peas and wheat.

Large gas infrastructure such as the Orana Central Processing plant is close by. Origin Energy is knocking on the doors of these multimillion dollar farms as they want to begin extracting CSG, starting with 171 wells at Hopeland. Some landholders have agreed while others have locked their gates and put up no trespassing signs.

A group of people against CSG has completed a survey of all the households in the area and 85 percent of people are against CSG. A Declaration Day will be held this Saturday May 16. This is significant. Hopeland has an extremely conservative community and it’s the first to be surveyed on the western Darling Downs and in the Western Downs Regional Council, which goes from Dalby almost out to Roma, a huge amalgamated shire.

The land at Hopeland will be farmed for hundreds of years. The gas may last for five years, the companies reckon they will get thirty years but can they ever rehabilitate the land and the aquifers?

Tree Pear & Prickly pear

When I left Goondawindi I could not help but notice what I thought were giant prickly pears but apparently they are not. They are tree pears. I am told that both are declared pests but the prickly pear has mostly been eradicated whereas the tree pear has not. Farmers are not so concerned about tree pear as they have few spines enabling cattle to eat them during a drought and it does not spread as fast as prickly pear. The tree pear has an deep orange flower and red fruit while the very prickly prickly pear has bright yellow flowers and dark purple fruit.

End of road tour but not the blog

Kenya Water Treatment Facility

I drove from Chinchilla to Kogan with a slight detour to see the Kenya water treatment facility, a monstrous building with huge dams and lucerne crops nearby. I saw ramshackle houses close to noisy gas wells. Then I headed to Dalby through fertile fields of cropping, studded with well-maintained houses, sheds and silos and on to Toowoomba.

The decent from Toowoomba surprised me and soon I was into four lanes of traffic, bumper to bumper. I hadn’t missed that.

Now I am in Byron Bay where I will spend a few days before heading home. This blog will continue to be updated as I go through my notes, interviews and do more research but it won’t be daily.

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.

Keeping miners out

Joe Hill and his sign

Today I met Joe Hill, an Angus cattle breeder from Miles, who has refused to negotiate with or allow anyone from the CSG companies onto his property. He has a big ‘No Trespassing’ sign at his gate. One of the four gas companies that have an exploration licence over his land was forced  to put a bend in their pipeline to skirt his property. It’s known as ‘Joe’s Bend’.

Joe’s primary concern was the filling out of National Declaration Forms which are mandatory when selling cattle. This form requires farmers to declare if any chemicals have been used on their farm. If he had allowed a gas company on his property he could not honestly answer this question and if you are in doubt you have to declare it and that makes it very difficult to sell your cattle.

Roma Oil & Gas

The Big Rig at Information Centre, Roma

Roma is a place I really wanted to visit as I had recently come across several interesting stories about it during my research on the Great Artesian Basin. Roma is where the first natural gas was found in Australia.

The town has an average annual rainfall of 600mm. During a drought in 1900 it was short of water as the creek and a reservoir were inadequate. A bore was drilled to 1350 feet and water and gas gushed out but it took several years to know how to separate them. The problem was solved by sinking another bore inside the existing bore and driving it down to the gaseous strata. A gas plant was completed in 1906 and when shops and hotels were first connected and lit up, they became a public attraction. ‘It gives a perfectly white light, and most brilliant as displayed by the block burners and mantles.’

Ten days after connecting the first premises, the gas flow stopped. It was not known if it had run out, an obstruction blocked it or if the casing had leaked and the gas had found another way of escape. Experts were called in but the bore was not restored.

Moree to Roma

Victoria Hotel, Goondawindi

Today I drove from Moree to Goondawindi, The Gums, Surat and Roma, through towns I have not seen before. What surprised me most were the old buildings, which indicated the prosperity of this region in times gone by.

Cotton, on the roadsides, floated up whenever a car passed on the road between Moree and Goondawindi. Dust from a vast area of ploughed ground was visible from miles away. Goondawindi is a thriving cotton town on the border of NSW and Queensland. I visited the Goondawindi Cotton Shop but I was unable to buy anything because everything was made in China (see blog 29 April – My Protest to the Death Penalty).