No fracking way, say rallyers
A rally outside of state parliament last Thursday saw about 100 people holding picket signs, wearing t-shirts and making speeches in opposition to coal seam gas drilling and exploration.
The painted messages on the home-made placards read: “CSG No Fracking Way”, “Coal seam gas mining is how O’Farrell tells NSW voters to get fracked” and “Don’t Frack our Future”.
Residents and representatives from several community action groups attended including those from Beyond Zero, the Wilderness Conservation Society, Stop CSG Sydney, Stop CSG Illawarra and Lock the Gate Alliance.
The Member for Balmain Jamie Parker joined protesters on the footpath and voiced his support before making a formal comment in Parliament.
“We’re proposing that there be a moratorium on coal seam gas and an extension on the ban on fracking until full scientific evidence and the case is in, when it comes to the impacts of coal seam gas. But the government is not keen to do that,” Mr Parker said.
“They’ve released their strategic land use plan which are on exhibition at the moment, which are proposing a range of different steps that mining has to undertake in order to get approval.”
A Newtown family joined the demonstration. Miriam Lohmann, who was joined by her son Noah, 11, and husband Lars, said: “We’re worried about coal seam gas in St Peters, within residential areas. Also, with coal seam gas, if you start mining in food bowl areas, it’s odorless, tasteless and the consequences are unknown to us.”
Her husband Lars said they joined the rally after seeing a poster in their neighbourhood. “Water resources and farming will have longer futures than coal seam gas,” he said.
He said farmers should have the right to protect their properties and areas. “The state government is making revenue through licensing fees and any licensing from extraction. It needs to break the addiction on this source of revenue. They should be investing more in renewables.”
The chief executive at the Nature Conservation Council, Pepe Clarke said there are significant known impacts and serious risks from coal seam gas operations. “That kind of development is undertaken in natural areas such as the Pilliga Forest and it results in large areas of wildlife being cleared and fragmented. In agricultural landscape, it means various lands are alienated from agricultural use.”
He said the infrastructure, operations and by-products from CSG are harmful to habitats, drinking water and the agricultural industry.
“We’re talking about potentially thousands or tens of thousands of wells. So the landscape with potential for agricultural or natural landscape would become industrial,” he said.
Mr Clarke said water contamination is a major issue.
“The concern there, is the drinkable ground water, used for drinking or agriculture could be contaminated either by the fracking chemicals themselves or by the naturally saline contaminated water.”
He said there are lots of unknown factors with CSG. “Fracking and coal seam gas extraction is a relatively new technology, in Australia, we’re talking in the last five years.”
