6 Responses to “CONTACTS”

• Di Carlton says:

  July 12, 2010 at 1:52 pm

  My partner and I own a piece of land near Tara and we are both appalled at what the gas companies are doing. We want to move out west and live a healthy country lifestyle, but what incentive is there if a gasline is plonked onto our property and we have no say in the matter. I’m appalled with greedy corporations and government corruption. I had no idea the media in Gladstone has been banned from speaking about the gasline, including some residents. What a disgrace.

  Reply
• Heath Webb says:

  July 16, 2010 at 4:16 pm

  Hi W D A
  I am a 26 yr old farmer from near the Warrumbungles, which is 4hrs down the Newell hwy from Goondiwindi.
  We are part of the Gunnedah Basin – Coal Seam Gas Exploration PEL 462 region
  I have just organised our first meeting with landholders in the area, before meeting with Santos later that day. Santos dodged questions, and basically gave a lot of BS, you have been there before!
  I would love to discuss CSG with someone from your alliance.
  Seismic testing is set to occur here next week.
  Check out the website above for my interview on the ABC.

  Have you heard about seismic testing and heifers?
  The friend from Gunnedah who is on the Caroona Action Group Board, said that her heifers were near the road where seismic testing occured. Later on when preg testing occured, most of these cattle came back as barren. The same thing has happened before, and also with a trout hatchery farm near Narrabri.

  Look forward to hearing from you
  Heath

  Reply
• L Madsen says:

  November 13, 2010 at 10:13 am

  Review: Gasland

  November 13, 2010

  Hot topic … a householder lights tainted tap water for Josh Fox (left).

  An inflammatory expose warns of the dangers of natural gas mining, writes
  SANDRA HALL.

  In parts of the US, there are people who can light the water flowing from their
  kitchen taps – and it’s not just a flicker. In one demonstration, a hapless householder
  has to leap back as a flame shoots up, singeing the hairs on his arm.

  GasLand is an angry film but its director, Josh Fox, is far from being a tub-thumper.
  He has set out to systematically investigate methods used in the US for producing

  natural gas – a supposedly pure form of energy – and the evidence he has unearthed is
  devastating.

  Fox ranges from upstate New York to Louisiana before heading west to Texas,
  Wyoming and Colorado. And as he goes, he gathers accounts by farmers and
  householders of the damage done to their land, livestock and the health of their
  families by the effects of natural gas mining.

  He starts by declaring his own interest. In the spring of 2008, he received a letter
  from a natural gas company offering him $US100,000 ($98,770) for the right to drill
  on his sylvan stretch of land in upstate New York. His family has owned the land -
  and the house on it – for as long as he can remember and he wants to know exactly
  what he’ll be paying for this ostensible windfall, so he takes his camera and goes on
  the road.

  His first stop is the neighbouring town of Dimock in a previously idyllic part of
  Pennsylvania now studded with gas wells and the news is not good. It’s here that
  residents have discovered an alarming new meaning for the term ”fire water”.

  The cause of their misery, Fox explains, is hydraulic fracturing, the system used to
  free the gas from rock far beneath the Earth’s surface. Miners pump in great volumes
  of sand and water at intense pressure but the mixture is also spiked with a cocktail of
  chemicals, which include methane and, it seems, it seeps into the aquifers that feed
  the area’s water wells. It’s a story we hear again and again as Fox travels through
  ”gasland”, parts of the country that sit on top of the Marcellus Shale, a massive
  natural gas deposit, affecting at least 25 US states.

  Fox is young, with glasses and an inquiring expression and he greets each new
  revelation with wonder rather than indignation. Clearly, he can’t believe his luck
  when the flammable water gives him the chance to illuminate his argument with
  some real fireworks. But he leaves most of the talking to those living with the gas
  wells in their backyards – and they need little encouragement.

  Farmers sadly show him dying horses and cattle. A neurologist tells him about the
  increase she has seen in diseases of the human nervous system. A farmer fears he
  might have to walk off the holding his family has worked for generations. And in a
  sequence laced with gallows humour, Fox finds a woman who’s been keeping the
  corpses of a selection of poisoned woodland animals in her freezer for months in the
  hope of finding someone interested enough to arrange autopsies.

  Some property owners are suing the gas companies. Others initially accepted
  compensation on condition they remain silent but years of having to depend on
  bought water while worrying about the long-term effects of the contamination have
  prompted them to speak out.

  Litigation, however, is complicated. Thanks to a decision by the Bush administration,
  the natural gas industry is exempt from having to conform to regulations laid down
  by the Safe Drinking Water Act and other environmental legislation. Last year,
  however, a group of Democratic congressmen introduced a bill aimed at repealing
  the exemption.

  And Fox punctuates his narrative with footage from sittings of a US congressional
  committee considering the bill. As a result, we watch some very uncomfortable gas
  company bosses being ordered to recite the long list of toxic chemicals that are used
  in releasing the gas from its subterranean home.

  But it’s not just the water that’s affected. There have been gas blowouts and
  explosions and there are fears of air pollution caused by waste water brought back to
  the surface and left awaiting disposal in big open pits.

  The natural gas industry has been outraged by the film, calling it sensationalist
  propaganda. It argues, too, that the use of hydraulic fracturing is not new: it’s been
  going on for some 60 years with no confirmed cases of contamination.

  But as the film shows, confirmation is difficult. The companies have been countering
  landowners’ complaints by asserting that they have no proof because they didn’t have
  their water tested before the arrival of the gas wells. And the current boom in natural
  gas has bumped up the drilling to a scale far beyond the point at which past
  experience can be definitive.

  The film is a powerful alarm – and an evocative one.

  Fox takes his banjo with him on his travels through the plains, forests and mountains
  that sit atop the Marcellus Shale and the banjo’s plangent tones, so redolent of rural
  parts of the US, wistfully underline just what’s at stake. Fox is now in Australia
  promoting the film and local campaigners, keen to point out the potential dangers of
  coal-seam gas mining, must be delighted to see him.

  Reply
• Vanessa says:

  November 25, 2010 at 1:18 pm

  SAVE OUR FOOD!

  Join the PETITION to HALT the experimental COAL SEAM GAS industry until the long term environmental, social and health impacts are known.

  http://www.bit.ly/CSG-petition

  With over 40,000 COAL SEAM GAS wells planned for QLD alone, this uncontrolled experiment threatens the future of our food supply and the Great Artesian Basin on which our farmers and towns depend.

  PLEASE TELL EVERYBODY YOU KNOW

  For more info go to:

  http://www.gasland.com.au

  http://www.sixdegrees.org.au

  Reply
• Greg Smith says:

  February 22, 2011 at 8:10 pm

  This industry is just another sad example of the “disconnect” between people and a dirty industry supported by Governments corrupted by short term monetary gain. The QLD Minister responsible, the Federal Minister and the industry’s woman spokesman were incredible in the recent 4 Corners programme aired recently. There seems to be little difference between Mubarak’s contempt for his population and that displayed by our elected officials.

  Reply
• Australia First Party says:

  October 17, 2011 at 12:18 am

  Wandoan Mega Mine – the biggest thermal coal mine in the southern hemisphere could destroy the Great Artesian Basin. More to this on: http://afqld.blogspot.com/2011/09/wandoan-mega-mine.html

  Reply