WOLA Bill must protect underground water

STATE Parliament is debating legislation to protect groundwater resources from the impacts of coal seam gas (CSG) projects over extensive areas of Queensland.
The scale of development is unprecedented, involving a massive grid of wells to tap coal seams to extract large quantities of water, thereby reducing the water pressure and releasing gas from the coal.
Farmers are very concerned about the dislocation of farming from surface gas extraction facilities and also the potential long-term loss of groundwater quantity and quality, which is needed to sustain their highly productive businesses. Local Governments share these concerns.
But the Queensland Government is committed to these massive projects to reap the gains for the State economy in terms of exports, jobs and taxes. Two of the three massive projects have already been given approval.
To address community concerns, the Government is applying stringent environmental requirements on surface construction and operational activities.
However, groundwater is another issue. The Government and project companies do not have a full understanding of how significant water extraction will impact on groundwater, particularly the extensive resources of the Great Artesian Basin and the overlying subartesian aquifers.
The Water and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2010 provides for ‘learn by doing’ or adaptive management approach backed by requirements on project companies to ‘make good’ on any impacts on farm or other bores.
QFF and landowners are not yet convinced that this adaptive management process will ensure that companies will make-good for bores that could be rendered unable to supply water in the quantities and quality required.
A negotiated agreement about making good these impacts will be of little value if there is no way to prove water damage is the result of CSG extraction.
The legislation provides for baseline assessments on all bores to benchmark the condition and capacity of the bores prior to water extraction.
It is good to see at last that there is detailed consultation underway about how this baseline assessment should be conducted.
However, this is just one of a range of measures in the Bill that need to be better defined before QFF and landowners have confidence in the government’s ability to plan for and fix any impacts that might occur.
For example, we want to see more details of how projects companies will produce underground water impact reports regularly to predict impacts below defined trigger levels over the short and the long term.
We also want to see how they will conduct a rigorous monitoring program of water quality, quantity and water levels within their tenures to improve the understanding of groundwater and impacts of water extraction.
There is a danger that these measures alone will not address the cumulative impact that the three major CSG projects could have.
The Bill provides for the Queensland Water Commission (QWC) to conduct monitoring and prepare impact reports over defined wider cumulative impact areas.
We then need further details of how this program will monitor adverse impacts on aquifers across all CSG areas so that landowners can review and make comments.
The Government is committed to take this adaptive approach given the limited knowledge of the groundwater resources and the impacts that the massive extraction of water could have over such a wide area.
But it is these uncertainties and the scale of the projects that has communities opposed to these projects proceeding.
While the Government has ramped up consultation in recent months, the lack of effective engagement from the outset has left communities frightened for the future of farming and communities.
Rural water users have particular difficulty with the approach taken in the Bill when the Murray Darling Basin Authority has taken such a ‘precautionary’ approach by prioritizing environmental outcomes at the expense of substantially reduced irrigation entitlements and adverse impact on irrigation communities.
There is the added twist for the Queensland Government that any drawdown of subartesian aquifers as a result of CSG water extraction will breach the requirements of the proposed Basin Plan.
State MPs will discuss a range of proposals to better manage project impacts, but it is expected the government will use its majority to push the legislation through.
The State Government must increasingly engage communities in the detail of implementing this Bill if they are to build confidence in the adaptive process and needed community support for the projects.
Failure to do this will undermine the medium to long-term social viability of these projects and the benefits they can provide to Queensland.