CLAIMS put to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and parroted by the Queensland federal Senator about alleged human health and environmental impacts of Coal Seam Gas Mining (CSG) and damage to farm production, have been strongly rejected.
Senator Hanson visited the Chinchilla region of Queensland last week and was given various first-hand accounts and serious claims about local concerns with CSG mining, including from some farmers.
The Queensland Senator’s tour was organised by anti-CSG group, the Western Downs Alliance, with support from the Lock the Gate Alliance, while other critics also spoke alongside her during a community meeting held at the Chinchilla Bowls Club.
The event was broadcast on social media and showed Senator Hanson pledging to take forward, politically, various claims made to her during the tour about local economic, environmental and social threats from CSG mining.
“Facts need to be exposed,” she said.
Some of the claims put to Senator Hanson included that a local disabled child that she met on the day and said was named Josh - but sources claimed that wasn’t his actual name - had been forced to stay indoors “for years” due to “acid rain”.
She said his parents had bought him a brand new wheelchair for $10,000 so he could get around outside but “guess what he can’t use it”.
“He can’t get out because they’re frightened of the acid rain that comes down on him and it affects his health,” she said.
“They put in a pool for him to use (and) guess what he can’t use it, because he can’t go outside because of the impact it’s having on his health.”
Senator Hanson also spoke about waste-water from fracking that’s placed into ponds, once it’s drawn to the surface.
She said after speaking to locals she now understood that waste-water was “like an acid rain that you have”.
“I saw a car affected by it and a rain water tank affected by it and the locals have actually had their water tested now (and) they’ve been told, ‘don’t drink this water’ - that’s how bad it is,” she said.
“Now people here are actually having to get the water brought in because they’re frightened of actually drinking the water but they’re still showering and cooking in the water.
“Now our authorities are not being up front as far as I’m concerned and I believe that this has been hidden too much and people aren’t being straight forward.
“I think our politicians need to be truthful with people – if this is affecting their health – as the doctor here has said, it does have an impact on their health.
“We need to be mindful of this.”
Senator Hanson said people needed to pressure politicians to say, “we want the truth, we want the answers”.
We have to know that should we be concerned about our children’s future’ because that’s what it’s all about,” she said.
But the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association’s (APPEA) rejected the claims with Chief Executive Dr Malcolm Roberts saying it was “disappointing anti-fossil fuel activists are using dishonest, fear campaigns to alarm people in regional communities”.
Dr Roberts said APPEA would also welcome an opportunity to meet with Senator Hanson and her colleagues to discuss the industry’s contribution to jobs and development in regional Queensland.
He said APPEA wrote to Senator Hanson following the federal election and again two weeks ago with an offer to participate in a site tour and visit farms with operating gas wells on site.
That offer also included speaking with many landholders, local government and community leaders about their experiences as the gas industry has developed, he said.
“Senators would benefit from a balanced look at our operations,” he said.
“What has been achieved in the Surat Basin is a great Australian success story – one that has created thousands of jobs and delivered the biggest upgrade to local infrastructure since World War II.
“It is also a successful example of developing a new industry alongside rural industries.
“Industry understands that development can create tensions but it’s disappointing anti-fossil fuel activists are using dishonest, fear campaigns to alarm people in regional communities.
“Industry hopes One Nation can find time to meet with industry and groups other than those affiliated with the Lock the Gate Alliance whose stated objective is to stop fossil fuel production.”
APPEA also addressed the allegations of acid rain damage saying there was no evidence to label CSG a health risk.
The spokesperson said claims made in 2013 that CSG production was damaging a car at Tara - a town in the region Senator Hanson visited - was looked at and an “expert investigation” found the damage to be caused by lerp insects that can produce large amounts of residue that can foul surfaces beneath trees, such as rooftops and cars.
APPEA said gas companies had also installed monitoring wells to detect any changes in aquifer pressure - using vibrating wireline piezometers - or changes in the chemistry in the aquifers underlying their permit areas.
This information is delivered to the Queensland Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment on a six-monthly basis.
APPEA also rejected the claims made at the Chinchilla forum by Dr Geralyn McCarron who conducted a survey of local people in 2013 that she said produced “really disturbing” results showing 58 per cent of participants believed their health was being impacted by gas fields.
Dr McCarron said the health symptoms identified by the survey were skin rashes, headaches, nose bleeds, coughs and difficulty breathing.
“What really worried me was it seemed to affect very young children as well,” she told the forum.
Senator Hanson said to “verify” what Dr McCarron had said, she visited local families on the day of her tour and was told about health issues concerning one family with 11 children like, “waking up with nightmares, screaming through the night, pain, scared”.
“It’s not only just about the nose bleeds and it’s not only about the headaches that their experiencing it’s also the anxiety and they’re scared,” she said.
“This is the words they’re actually telling me and to sit across the table and to watch a mother get tears in her eyes when she’s explaining the hurt and pain her child is going through I think that can-not be disregarded so I learnt a lot.”
Senator Hanson said Dr McCarron had also said no local doctors would get involved or would say anything about the issues and she had to come in “from the outside, to say the truth about what’s really happening”.
Dr McCarron said she’d tried to get health authorities to take it seriously and politicians, but had not got very far.
She said it was “a big problem” and on information she’d obtained there had also been a “very, very significant increase in hospitalisations for heart disease, respiratory disease, cancer and attempted suicides in this timeframe”.
But an APPEA spokesperson said according to Queensland Health, no link had been found between CSG operations and health concerns.
However, Queensland Health did find that the nature of complaints meant there were multiple potential causes and explanations not related to CSG activities including; faecal contamination in the water supply; the use of wood-fired heaters or open fires; and rainwater contaminated with bacteria, viruses or other organisms, a statement said.
“A further reference is the ongoing Monash University Health Watch Study which has been studying the health of around 19,000 past and present Australian petroleum industry workers since 1980,” a statement said.
“The Monash research shows that petroleum industry employees have better health than the general Australian community and are less likely to die of the diseases commonly causing death - including cancer, heart and respiratory conditions.”
During his talk at the Chinchilla community forum, local farmer Lee McNichol said “unfortunately” Queensland politicians had allowed the resource sector to take unlimited volumes of water from the Great Artesian Basin which was unsustainable.
He said the Great Artesian Basin is a finite resource that was in decline.
“The commonwealth government Independent Expert Scientific Committee has clearly stated that it is in decline and it is not replenishing to the extent that we are mining water from it and this puts rural communities and agricultural industries dependent on underground water at long term risk,” he said.
Senator Hanson also introduced David McCabe who she said was a former farmer who had moved into town and took her out to see a “salt dump”.
She said it contained 450,000 to 900,000 tonnes of salt per year and another 45,000 tonnes of it that “could be contaminated – we don’t really know what’s in it”.
They have to find some place to get rid of that salt she said but there was “not enough answers”.
Senator Hanson said she was also told by Mr McCabe that the “salt dump” could make its way into the Murray Darling Basin river system and the question needed to be asked and answered about what’s happening with the extracted salt from the CSG water.
“Imagine this, between 450,000 tonnes to 900,000 tonnes of salt, so where is this going to go?” she said.
“And you’re talking about the soil there, it won’t be able to hold it, it’s actually going to filter through the soil and end up in the river system.
“So again the water ways - we’ve got to protect our water ways because further down the track you have farmers in the Murray Darling who are using that water.
”That water from the coal seam gas mining is actually being used on our food – they’re actually using that as water to irrigate our crops so it is of great concern.”
Senator Hanson asked Dr McCarron if the local health problems could be coming from the water.
Dr McCarron said 89pc of the research done not only in Queensland but internationally, since 2013, showed that “the air can be contaminated, the water can be contaminated and that air and water can cause health problems”.
She said the problem wasn’t just salt but the water also contained whatever is “exhumed” from the ground including radioactive materials and heavy metals.
All of that then can potentially go down stream in the Murray Darling Basin, she said.
Senator Hanson said “We need to put pressure on the governments to say this is not good enough”.
“I believe the politicians need to get out here, start listening to the people, make some decisions,” she said.
But the APPEA spokesperson said the claim that the Great Artesian Basin does not replenish itself had no grounding in science and for example rain helped to recharge it.
The spokesperson said water produced from the coal seams was mildly salty (brackish), came from deeper geological layers, and was generally not usable for agricultural purposes without desalination treatment or blending with fresher (less saline) water.
The rate of extraction is currently 65,000 megalitres per year which was likely to peak at about 110,000 megalitres per year in the next few years, a statement said.
APPEA said about 97pc of the water produced was desalinised and beneficially used: 59pc by agriculture, 14pc by industry and 24pc by reinjection in aquifers.
“When treated and beneficially used, CSG production water can be an alternative supply to the water that is currently taken from the shallower, less saline aquifers of the Great Artesian Basin - this in itself will assist in recharging these shallow aquifers over time,” the spokesperson said.
“Water produced from CSG is a small percentage (0.03pc or three parts in 10,000) of Australia’s Great Artesian Basin.
In closing her talk, Senator Hanson said CSG was “not all that it’s cracked up to be”.
“At the end of the day it’s not all about jobs; it’s all about the environment that we live in - protecting our environment to make sure that we still have it in tact for future generations,” she said.
“And what we’ve got to do is make sure that we do not destroy our farming sector.
“We have to be a country that can produce our food to feed ourselves and not rely on the rubbish that comes in from other countries.
“I will always stand up for the Australian farmer and support them.”