contamination may help cougar sue qld govt

Source - http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8368320/contamination-may-help-cougar-sue-qld-govt

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Miner Cougar Energy believes cancer-causing chemicals found in bore water on southeast Queensland farmland could help it win its court case against the Queensland government.

Low levels of thiocyanate and formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, were detected in a widespread area on the Kingaroy property.

The Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM) on Monday said the contamination was "most likely" caused by recent or historical agricultural products, not by Cougar Energy.

The government has made it clear that the mining company has no link to the current contamination.

The contamination was found during routine tests near Cougar Energy's underground coal gasification pilot, which was shut down after the cancer-causing chemical benzene was found in a monitoring bore on the site last year.

Cougar Energy chairman Malcolm McAully said the finding of the chemicals on the farm could help the company win its court case against the government over the shutdown of the mine.

He said it was ironic that the farmers in the area who had campaigned against the mining project due to perceived risks to groundwater could be responsible for contamination.

"As opposed to relying on the facts, they rely on misinformation to campaign against Cougar," Mr McAully told AAP on Tuesday.

Cougar is seeking $34 million from the state government and three bureaucrats in damages for the shutting of the mine, alleging negligence and breach of statutory duties in their administration of the state's Environmental Protection Act.

Cougar will argue DERM incorrectly applied quality guidelines for the contamination of drinking water, instead of non-potable water guidelines, as set out in their permit.

The bores at the Kingaroy plant were not accessible for drinking, and should have therefore been bound by a much higher contamination threshold level - 950 parts per billion (ppb) - instead of 1 ppb for drinking water, it says.

Mr McAully said the most recent contamination showed that stricter monitoring by farmers of their bores should be enforced.

Drew Wagner from AgForce said the government had only found that farming was the "most likely" cause of the contamination, and he would wait for further test results to confirm this.

He said there had been no historical use of those chemicals on the farm and one of the springs was fed from the land the Cougar development was on.

"We're waiting with anticipation on what those further investigations will show," he told AAP.