Kingaroy groundwater incident raises the red flag

Alarm bells rang loudly last week with the news that underground gas mining activity at Kingaroy may have leached benzene and toluene into the groundwater.
Farmers and the community are now in limbo as they wait to hear how bad the damage will be, and they are justifiably outraged at the potential fallout from such pollution.
Given that these chemicals are carcinogenic and that the aquifer is such a vital economic and environmental resource, all sectors of the community deserve an ironclad guarantee that this experimental activity is not causing any harm.
Because that is exactly what it is – experimental.
Underground coal gasification (UCG) at this site, and a small number of others, is happening under a supervised trial due to conclude in 2012.
The technology works by injecting air and oxygen under pressure underground, and igniting the coal seam, which causes a chemical reaction that turns the coal to gas, which is then extracted.
Queensland Dairyfarmers’ Organisation president Brian Tessmann summarised the situation this week when he said that if the government and gas companies wanted to continue to experiment with this technology, then they should do it at a place where there is no threat to potable water.
The evidence from overseas is in unison. As far back as 1984, a US EPA report (The Effect of Underground Coal Gasification on Ground Water) recommended areas of New Mexico for UCG technology, but only because of the barren environment there.
“The environment of the locale is high desert and therefore characterised by low human and animal populations and sparse vegetation,” the report said. “Background studies indicate the groundwater is brackish.”
That does not sound anything like a description of Kingaroy and the Darling Downs.
A second, more recent, study from the US suggests caution, including another US EPA report from 1999 (The Class V Underground Injection Control Study).
“Contamination of ground water resulting from in situ fossil fuel recovery operations is well documented, to the extent that most, if not all, in-situ fuel recovery operations initiated in the last 20 years appear to have caused some groundwater contamination,” it said.
“. . . the primary contaminants (eg phenols, benzene) are products of incomplete combustion rather than components of the injected gases and fluids.”
According to this report, trial sites are potentially an even greater risk than full-scale operations because of their smaller size.
These areas of Queensland are part of the nation’s food bowl, and the underground water is a pristine and valuable resource.
The technology employed at this plant is very different to that being used in the large-scale coal seam gas projects across the Surat Basin.
But this event has highlighted a problem surrounding the government’s ability to maintain rigor in environmental resource monitoring activities while developments progress so rapidly.
Many people have felt for some time that our ability to plan for and monitor the cumulative impact of such a large industry was struggling to keep pace with the development of the sector.
Given all this, and the widespread media interest in the Kingaroy water contamination, the government and the gas companies have now had a very high degree of warning and a close-up glimpse of what could go wrong.
I hope that this incident helps deliver a degree of caution to the rapid expansion of the gas industry and I hope the Government looks to reforms that may be needed to ensure proactive steps can be taken to avoid such circumstances.
Above all else, I hope the impacts of this incident can be mitigated and that there are no lasting affects to the health of people, animals or farming operations, all of which have been caught up in the incident.