11.19 am, Thursday May 24 2012

Gas company defends disposal plans

15:16 AEDT Thu Apr 21 2011
VIEWS: 0
| FLOCKS: 0
| comments0 comments so far
Also on
Fake filmTeen suspended over bullying vid No chuteDaredevil leaps from helicopter Tipping overTruck filmed losing control 'Too hot'Woman 'fired for good looks' Grease bombEggs and bacon in roll heaven Chelsy DavyChelsy girlHarry says she's 'the one'

Coal seam gas company QGC has defended its plans for the disposal of mineralised water and salt brought to the surface during mining operations.

The company was responding to claims from Friends of the Earth that QGC is seeking to have the Queensland government water down environmental approvals for the disposal of coal seam gas (CSG) water and to build more evaporation ponds to increase its brine storage.

The company admits that it is still seeking a viable commercial plan to dispose of brine and salt extracted in CSG mining.

A QGC spokesman said the company intends to invest A$1 billon in treating water.

"We are currently improving our water management by building water treatment plants to treat all of our water so that it can be used by the community for things such as irrigation, town water supply and industry," the spokesman said in a statement.

"This work requires some changes to our environmental authorities, including for temporary discharge of treated water to surface waters while a pipeline is built.

"This discharge will actually prevent the need for more large dams.

"Future operations for the LNG project will include water aggregation and brine ponds to enable water treatment to occur.

"We are presently studying commercial applications for the use of brine and salt."

Friends of the Earth organiser Drew Hutton said QGC wants to amend its environmental authority (EA) to allow it to dispose of more CSG water into the Murray Darling Basin at Wieambilla Creek, near Chinchilla, despite doubts by experts that the gas companies can meet the standards at an acceptable cost.

Mr Hutton said these developments showed the inadequacy of the state government's regulatory approach.

"The state government's much-vaunted 'adaptive management' approach to regulating the coal seam gas industry means little more than the government watering down sections of the environmental authorities when the companies don't want to meet the standards," Mr Hutton told AAP.

"As more and more water gets extracted from the coal seam, QGC is having trouble dealing effectively with it, so they are wanting the government to amend their environmental authority to enable easier solutions."

Mr Hutton said an expert in waste water management, Dr Konstantinos Athanasiadis, told the recent Future Gas conference in Brisbane that he did not believe existing technology would enable the CSG water to reach the regulatory standard for discharge into waterways at an acceptable cost.

"If treated to an inferior level then discharges of CSG water to inland waterways would not only disrupt water-flow regimes in those streams but also would potentially contaminate them," Mr Hutton said.

He said Dr Athanasiadis also made it clear there was also no feasible solution to the problem of disposing of the one million tonnes of salt brought to the surface, other than landfill.

 

Most popular

 Student suspended over anti-bullying videoA US high school student who created a Facebook page and YouTube video about a fictional character to teach her classmates about bullying was suspended after she made the character kill herself.
 Video captures truck driver tipping over on bendIt's the last thing you want to see while taking a nice scenic drive in the countryside.
 Memoir used as evidence against fraudA Tasmanian grandmother who claimed $200,000 over 16 years from the single person disability pension is facing jail after she revealed in an autobiography that she had a live-in husband.
 Woman gets trapped in chair for two daysAn 84-year-old Swedish woman was trapped for two days in a folding chair after it broke and she was unable to free herself.
 Man accessed child porn with son's library card

A Tasmanian man accidentally downloaded child pornography from a library using his son's library card, a court has heard.

 UK mum, 31, sent home hours before deathPathologists are yet to determine what killed an English dance teacher who collapsed and died hours after being sent home from hospital.
 Man, 64, falls 4m, neighbour, 69, chargedA Sydney man will face court after he allegedly pushed his neighbour from a second-floor balcony.
 UK daredevil skydives without parachuteA British stuntman became the world's first skydiver to land without a parachute on Wednesday, falling 731 metres (2,400 feet) to drop safely onto a crash-pad of cardboard boxes.
 Drunk Russian bride-to-be kicks man to death

An inebriated 22-year-old woman from the central Russian region of Udmurtiya kicked a man to death on the eve of her wedding because he owed her money, investigators said on Wednesday.

 Sydney woman 'bit off boyfriend's tongue'A Sydney woman allegedly bit off part of her boyfriend's tongue during an argument at a Kings Cross motel late on Tuesday night.
Be our fan on Facebook
Most Recommended
You need the latest version of Flash Player.
Enjoy the most vivid content on the web
Watch video without extra features
Interact with applications on your favourite sites
Upgrade now

page complete