The Pilliga is a vast expanse of bushland, located between Narrabri and Coonabarabran in western NSW. This iconic area of public land is under threat from the largest coal seam gas project ever proposed for New South Wales.
The vast forests of the Pilliga filter the waters that recharge our greatest inland water resource – some of the sweetest water that you will ever taste lies beneath the Pilliga sandstones in aquifers of the Great Artesian Basin.
Gas company Santos has plans for a gas project that would drill 1,100 coal seam gas wells, clear 1,000km of pipelines and spread out across 850 square kilometres of forest in the Pilliga. It would involve wells drilled on a massive grid, every 500m, as well as access tracks, pipelines, water treatment facilities and compression plants.
The project, if approved, will be linked by regional pipelines either to a new gas export facility at Newcastle or an existing export facility at Gladstone in Queensland.
Once these pipelines are in place, they will undoubtedly open up the entire north-west of NSW to rapid coal seam gas development.
Read more about the proposed coal seam gas project
here.
The Impact, should it proceed:
- Clearing of at least 2,400 hectares of bush and fragmentation of 850 square kilometres
- Loss and fragmentation of habitat for up to 15 nationally threatened species and 48 species that are threatened in NSW.
- Increased feral pest and predator invasion and spread of noxious weeds
- Likely draw-down and contamination of groundwater systems, including the Great Artesian Basin
- Potential pollution of surface water from saline water extracted from coal seams
- Production of large quantities of concentrated brine as a waste product
- Dramatically increased risk of catastrophic fire in a landscape that is already extremely fire prone
http://www.stoppilligacoalseamgas.com.au/
They'll lay waste to Australia then move out with not a care for the damage they've done.
