[Greens-Media] Media release: Newman Government set to let mining magnates destroy Qld water supplies with shale gas

[Vandeleur, Monique (Sen L. Waters)]

Senator Larissa Waters
Senator for Queensland

Media release

Tuesday, 16 July, 2013

Newman Government set to let mining magnates destroy Qld water supplies with shale gas

The Newman Government's plans for shale gas in Queensland, revealed in a media report today, threaten our groundwater supplies, including the Lake Eyre Basin, say the Australian Greens.

"Queenslanders will rally against this latest onslaught to our agricultural industry, regional communities and the environment by the Newman Government," Senator Larissa Waters, Australian Greens mining spokesperson, said.

"We can't let shale gas do what coal seam gas is doing to our precious water supplies, valuable farmland and changing climate.

"Like CSG, shale gas causes land disturbance through the drilling of wells through aquifers, and that drilling combined with fracking poses serious threats of contamination and disruption of groundwater systems.

"In the USA, where hundreds of thousands of shale gas wells have been sunk, the risk to water resources has been sufficient to trigger a multi-year, well-resourced US EPA study, due to report within the next 18 months.

"The Greens gave federal Labor the chance to protect our water supplies from shale gas - I moved an amendment in the Senate to the water trigger, which requires the water impacts of coal seam gas to be assessed federally, so that it would have also applied to shale gas.

"But Labor knocked it back, and now communities in Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia are left with no federal water protection from state government plans to roll out shale and please the big mining companies at all costs.

"Only the Greens are standing up to the big mining companies to protect our land, water and climate for future generations," Senator Waters said.

Contact - Monique Vandeleur 0419 626 725