CSG Pollution Drives Darling Downs Family From Their Home

Queensland mother Sandi Bamberry has been driven from her home by CSG companies' pollution. Now she heads to Canberra to tell of the appalling destruction occurring in one of the richest agricultural areas of Australia.

Queensland mother Sandi Bamberry says she has been pushed to protest on the lawns of federal parliament because she can no longer stay in her home town due to CSG pollution.

Pollution from CSG is all encompassing, it poisons the land, the water and the air, and has even a social form of pollution, in which communities are destroyed.

Sandi was formerly a resident of Tara on the Darling Downs in Queensland.

The Darling Downs was once a fabulously rich agricultural area, but these days you are more likely to hear of it called the Surat Basin.

This because the CSG companies moved in, and quickly began destroying this area in every way shape or form.

Sandi's major problem was her child developing a nose bleeds, as can be seen in the thumbnails for this story.

She did try to get help from the relevant authorities, but found nothing satisfactory, so first moved out of Tara to Armidale, in northern NSW, and now to Canberra, to see if she can get some attention at federal government level.

The nose bleeds that seem to afflict children mostly, are almost certainly the result of flaring contamination, highlighted by the next picture.

Light and noise pollution from QGC flaring at 2am woke a long suffering neighbour who took this photo.

As the photographer said, when the flares aren't burning they then release raw methane air pollution.

While this photo looks quite spectacular, there is nothing joyous about it for those who have to live nearby.

Flaring makes a considerable amount of noise, an air-cracking, roaring, buzzing sound and though it's invisible here, all flaring releases a pall of black smoke, indicating incomplete combustion, and so there is always some toxics released from flaring.

Thus for towns on the Darling Downs like Tara and nearby Chinchilla, where flaring is a constant menace to the population, a greasy black film now permeates the town.

Samples from water tanks in the town are often black, rather than clear, and thus flaring pollutes first the air, and is thought to therefore be the cause of the nose bleeds of Sandi's child.

The greasy film eats into car ducos fro example, and thus can be clearly seen how much damage it is doing to the lungs of human and stock and wildlife.

So while the flaring causes air quality deterioration, it is also in part responsible for the lowering of water quality.

The greasy black residue floats through the air and settles on the land, which is then picked by the water, and carried into the dams and rivers.

This picture here shows a dam in the Chinchilla area, the greasy brown stain, is, well, no one really knows as the CSG companies refuse to accept testing done by individuals and say, in general, "There is no evidence that 'x' causes 'y'".

They can say that because there is indeed no evidence yet. Partly because the CSG industry has taken off in Queensland at a breakneck pace with no control whatsoever.

Instead of, as in NSW, where various companies have started with pilot programs, all unsuccessful at not damaging the environment.

In Queensland the CSG industry was just given carte blanche to do whatever they damn well like.

The other issue with water is quantity, CSG creates produced water. This is water removed from the wells, particularly in the early stages of the well, and on the Darling Downs the CSG industry creates a lot of this.

It is treated at water treatment stations using reverse osmosis, and then pumped to places like the Chinchilla Weir and also Dawson Valley for use by irrigators.

The company says the water is fine, though the locals are sceptical (to say the least) about this, but even if it is completely clean and toxic free, then that is not the end of the story.

For the reverse osmosis process produces salt as a by product.

One CSG company, QGC, for instance say on their water management plan that they are going to produce 200,000 tonnes a year.

To put that into context, we Australians eat 35,000 tonnes a year of salt in our food, and QGC have six times that amount to dispose of.

Crazy disposal ideas include drilling even deeper wells than the CSG gas producing ones, and injecting the salt "under" the water table.

Also ocean outfall has been suggested, again crazy, as you are probably aware of the outrage over the Abbott Point development, where dredging is planned to expand the coal port.

Well you can imagine the uproar if the CSG companies announced that they were no longer satisfied with destroying the land, but are now going to toxify the oceans as well.

Additionally with water, that most precious substance on the driest continent, is loss of water from farmers wells.

Some bores have dropped over a hundred metres, leaving the farmer with no readily usable water.

Other bores now just blow gas, some have a mix of water and gas coming up, clearly of no use to human or beast.

So make no mistake the Darling Downs are being destroyed by the CSG companies, and Sandi has taken her protest to the highest level to begin the process of repair of her home.