GAS might be the bridge between the coal-fired present and the clean, green future, but if that bridge is to be built it’s going to need firm foundations.
Those foundations are the subject of bitter debate all over Australia, with communities demanding guarantees that industry and government won’t recklessly expose them to irreversible environmental and social damage in pursuit of the prospect of quick wealth.
A ‘‘national day of action’’ planned this weekend suggests the scale and extent of concern, with a number of Hunter communities preparing to participate.
In NSW – where gas companies are feverishly drilling test wells and planning pipeline routes – the government has established an inquiry into the industry. The parliamentary website discloses at least 640 submissions to the inquiry.
The government’s own submission strongly backs the rapid development of the industry, predicting about 5000 gas wells in the state by 2025 and urging the community to get used to the idea of gas and agriculture working side-by-side.
While nobody can deny that gas extraction royalties would be useful to the government, the case for tempering enthusiasm with caution is strong.
Australia’s National Water Commission, for example, has lodged a submission to the NSW inquiry, warning that the potential impacts of coal seam gas developments, ‘‘particularly the cumulative impacts of multiple projects, are not well understood’’.
The commission’s submission lists a variety of risks from gas extraction – most revolving around possible irreparable damage to aquifers and streams – and expresses concern that the extraction industry ‘‘represents a substantial risk to sustainable water management’’.
The Natural Resources Commission’s submission warns the government ‘‘to plan for this industry considering the cumulative impacts of many projects at a regional scale, not just the impacts of individual projects’’.
Anybody who has watched the expansion of the Hunter coal industry will realise how ill-equipped and unwilling the government has been to consider cumulative impacts in the past. The pervasive nature of the gas industry’s ambitions and the scale of risk involved to the state’s water resources suggests it is time for that to change.
Ambulance queries
AMBULANCE officers have accused their service of potentially harming an Upper Hunter heart attack victim’s prospects of survival by deploying a crew from a distant station in preference to a closer, but more expensive, on-call crew. The ambulance nearest the fatal East Gresford emergency was said to have been tied up with a patient transfer, making an alternative necessary.
The ambulance service has denied pennypinching, but the serious accusation warrants closer scrutiny. Perhaps an inquest might be the best vehicle to consider whether this death was preventable and whether yet another state government authority is treating Upper Hunter people as second-class citizens
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