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June 13th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
Updated
NSW Labor has questioned why the State Government renewed a coal seam gas licence in the state’s north-west while leaks of contaminated water were being investigated.
It was announced yesterday that Santos would be prosecuted in the Land and Environment Court for breaches at the Pilliga coal seam gas project in 2010 and 2011 including a 10,000-litre leak.
Santos took majority ownership of the site in November 2011 after its takeover of Eastern Star Gas, and it is liable for the breaches as directors of Eastern Star Gas cannot be prosecuted under current law.
When the leaks were first reported by a farmer in 2011, the NSW minerals department and Santos said eucalyptus leaves had probably discoloured the water.
Santos later released a report detailing more than a dozen incidents of pollution that it says occurred while Eastern Star Gas operated the drilling sites, and it promised to remediate the damage and review all work practices.
Santos spokesman Matthew Doman says the project had to be shut down, but there may still be leaks.
“Given there had been historical spills it is not clear whether they are ongoing or not,” Mr Doman said.
Labor environment spokesman Luke Foley says the licence should not have been renewed while there were still environmental issues.
“For the minister to renew the company’s licence in such a cavalier fashion before an investigation was completed is really a dereliction of his duty as a minister,” he said.
The Northern Inland Council for the Environment, which first lodged the complaints, says its concerns were not taken seriously.
Council spokeswoman Carmel Flint says it took a huge effort to force further investigations after written complaints were first sent to the State Government in August 2011, and a handful of people paid thousands of dollars to prove the contamination was real.
“What we had to do was actually go out and collect samples from the site, send them away to be tested, show that they were absolutely full of heavy metals and get that exposed through the media,” she said.
The Greens say it should not be up to members of the public to regulate coal seam gas operations.
Topics:
oil-and-gas,
environmental-impact,
government-and-politics,
pilliga-2388,
nsw
First posted
Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-13/questions-raised-after-csg-leak-prosecution-announced/4751842
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