Anyone who learned a little about what can go wrong with “fracking” from the “Gasland” documentary on SBS must surely realise that the new method of coal seam gas exploration and extraction using the fracking process puts our whole underground water supply in jeopardy – permanently.
If the hundreds of chemicals, which are blasted with millions of gallons of water into the area below our water table to force the gas out, escape into our water table (and this can and apparently does happen) farmland becomes wasteland and water becomes permanently toxic.
Mining companies allegedly managed to get away with this in America because of a loophole in their Clean Water Act, and now we hear that areas which always had permanent clean bore water have to get all their water trucked in for drinking, cooking, and washing; the people are sick and their animals no longer even look edible. Farming is now permanently impossible, as gas and introduced chemicals have escaped into their underground water supply and ruined it forever.
In Australia, vast areas in Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory share a huge inter-connected underground water supply called The Great Artesian Basin, which flows in many directions, and it follows that what is contaminated in one area can spread to another; so why would our so-called leaders even consider allowing this practice in Australia? Greed? Ignorance?
We have inherited a land of “milk and honey” where we can grow our own food and drink clean water. Our descendants won’t thank us for the gasland wasteland our government and mining companies left behind. As individuals it is our responsibility to make sure our food bowls and cattle properties remain well-watered, clean and viable.
Our future and the future of those in other countries who we help, depends on it!
Rosemary Sutherland,
Warwick
