Background on CSG Baselines for water impacts

The Queensland Government established the Queensland Water Commission (QWC) in 2006 with the charter of achieving sustainable water supplies. This was at the peak of the drought and 2 billion dollars had been spent on cleaning recycled water and pumping it up the mountains above the Wivenhoe Dam (Brisbane’s water supply)

Following public (Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee, Western Alliance and others) outcry regarding Coal Seam Gas, in 2010 the QWC was given the role of extended to manage the impacts of water extraction by petroleum and gas tenure holders (including GST). By that stage of course, Coal Seam Gas in Qld was almost 15 years old and there were already thousands of wells being drilled.

DERM had developed some guidelines as to what data should be collected to establish baselines for water potentially affected by CSG drilling and QWC worked with the gas companies to collect and collate data based on those guidelines. It started to build a database on the data as it came in. There was no historical baseline data and no attempt was made to collect or collate historical data as a baseline.

I made a number of attempts at water consultancy Simmonds & Bristow to work with the QWC to extend those guidelines to the data being collected by farmers, lobby groups and various management authorities. According to the QWC, the guidelines officially belonged to DERM their role was simply to collect the data.

Following the State Government Election of May 2012, it was announced that the QWC was to be disbanded (it is still in existence I note today) and the baseline data project folded. A number of enquiries to DERM (now Natural Resources and Mines or National Parks and Racing ?!%$#) and QWC  proved unfruitful in revealing who has the data.

Simmonds & Bristow were recommending to people that they did a Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons and the BTEX suite on the water. This only tests for hydrocarbon pollution and a good baseline test would also include salts and other minerals, but we had to find ways to keep the costs down.

At one stage I offered discounts to community groups and local catchment authorities but I believe that policy has been discontinued. Other water testing labs in the area include Richmond Labs and Tweed Shire Council. A BTEX and TPH (or RPH) suite of tests will cost well in excess of $100 per sample (do not be surprised if it is more than $300 but shop around) so is not something that most people can afford to do regularly.