"Exactly what part of a buried pipeline is worrying you?I...

"Exactly what part of a buried pipeline is worrying you?

I suspect it has to be the temporary disturbance associated with pipeline construction.

I've worked on a gas pipeline and a large dia water pipeline ... they have to produce detailed "work as executed" surveys because 9-12 months on you pretty much can't tell where the pipeline has been layed."

Buried pipeline
Not installed by some form of tunnelling, so it is necessary to clear a corridor - the question here is "How wide?" Are we talking 100 metres? 200 metres? 300 metres? Looking at similar pipelines in Qld there seems to be a corridor required in the 100-200 metre range.

So what we have is a buried pipeline in the middle of a 150 metre +/- corridor. Of course this corridor has to be cut through a World Heritage area, but that's just part of a green conspiracy to deprive you of unearned income so I assume that minor factor can be ignored? I wonder what UNESCO will have to say about that?

What about watercourses? From memory there are quite a few of those in the path of the pipeline - how exactly will the pipeline be buried there? Perhaps a different solution will be used there?

Then there's the whole issue of topography/ geology! A few years back I had a yarn with an engineer who had been looking at upgrading roads between Casino and Brisbane. This had always seemed like a great idea to me, but someone with expertise and experience in the field told me it was impossible - soils were too unstable etc. Which begs the question "How will a 150m wide corridor with a 5m trench in the middle of it deal with issues of soil stability etc, PARTICULARLY in a sensitive environmental area?"

Temporary

Just how are we defining temporary here? IN the late 70s I found myself exploring for fishing spots south of $#^(*%!e - (no great fishing spot found, but an awesome little point break). It was commented that there was a sand mining area over the next ridge and that after 8 (or 10) years it was indistinguishable from the undisturbed heath. Now the guy who said this believed what he said, but to even my untrained teenage eye, it was OBVIOUS where the heath had been disturbed. Dare I suggest that your self-interest is showing when you say "9-12 months on you pretty much can't tell where the pipeline has been layed"?

Perhaps you were laying pipe through pasture land which would recover faster than either the heath or World Heritage rainforest?!?

How long would a rainforest take to recover from this major incursion? I have read and heard figures ranging between 100 and 250 thousand years mentioned by experts in the field. Of course, on a geological timescale that IS temporary!

Here's a suggestion

MEL has no social licence to operate in the Northern Rivers so as a gesture of good faith, how about abandoning any suggestion that the gas it produces will be heading north, ie be intended for export? After all, the O'Farrell Alliance's rationale in approving this industrialisation is to address a supposed shortage of gas in NSW, not in Japan, China or anywhere else in Asia! It's time for MEL to bite the bullet and say that ALL the gas they produce will be sold in NSW and at non-LNG parity prices.

Of course that won't happen - they only intend this gas for export to Asia - we all know that. So why g=has the Alliance granted approvals on the basis of addressing a supposed shortage in NSW?

TR