Stolen from a MEL post at the end
Coal seam effluent salts sewerage
June 12, 2012
SMH
Want to dry sludge?
Excess water from the coal seam gas well was dumped at the plant.
Excess water from the coal seam gas well was dumped at the plant. Photo: Glenn Hunt
A COAL seam gas company has disposed of over a million litres of dirty water at a sewage treatment plant in northern NSW, breaching the plant’s license conditions, the NSW Environment Protection Authority said.
Metgasco, which operates a few dozen exploratory gas wells and hopes to drill up to 1000 in the next decade, trucked about 1.36 million litres of excess water from its storage ponds to the Casino sewage station in the 10 months to March.
The sewage plant, operated by Richmond Valley Council, has no license to process ‘‘produced water’’ from coal seam gas wells, which is salty and sometimes carries traces of drilling chemicals, but can be filtered into potable water. Large volumes of water are drawn up from underground at most coal seam gas sites as a by-product of the gas extraction process.
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The EPA has formally cautioned Richmond Valley Council for accepting the waste water, but Metgasco’s chief executive Peter Henderson said he could not see a problem with sending waste water through the sewage system.
‘‘The use of the sewage treatment plant is an appropriate disposal mechanism for what is essentially just salty water,’’ Mr Henderson said in a statement.
‘‘We are currently reviewing a range of permanent water treatment options, some of which include use by local industry and agriculture.’’
However the EPA said the practice must stop, and suggested that attempts should be made to clean and recycle the water for agricultural use.
‘‘Metgasco has also been advised that the water contained in its storage ponds cannot be disposed of via a (sewage treatment plant),’’ the EPA said in a letter, responding to a query from the Environmental Defender’s Office of NSW. ‘‘Further, the produced water needs to be assessed against the EPA’s solid and liquid waste guidelines to identify lawful disposal pathways.’’
The Lock the Gate Alliance, a coalition of farming and environment groups calling for a moratorium on gas drilling, said the water storage questions were worrying, given Metgasco’s plans to substantially expand the current drilling operations.
‘‘The fact is that already the system they have for managing the waste water is completely inadequate,’’ said Boudicca Cerese, the regional convenor of the Lock The Gate Alliance, a national group calling for a moratorium on coal seam gas drilling.
‘‘It’s disturbing to us that it takes members of the local community to bring this to the attention of the government,’’ Ms Cerese said. ‘‘They talk about strengthening the regulation of this industry, but on the ground it’s not doing it.’’
There are no confirmed reports of overflows from coal seam gas water storage ponds in the area, but local people said with the recent rain deluge some were nearly full to the brim.
Elsewhere in NSW, the state government has given approval for experimental gas wells to be drilled at Fullerton Cove, near Newcastle.
Dart Energy’s wells will be drilled down about 650 metres and then continue horizontally for up to a kilometre into the underground coal seams.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is not permitted at any of Dart’s proposed wells, and the use of the BTEX group of chemicals, which have sometimes been associated with groundwater contanimation, has also been expressly banned at the site.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/coal-seam-effluent-salts-sewerage-20120611-2060v.html#ixzz1xaTFTmUu
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