what would it look like ..., page-10

I've been to several operating CSG fields. After the grass has grown back in they are basically indistinguishable from any other farmland in the area.

Some of these fields have been operating for 10 years and have hundreds of wells in them.

There is no devastation. Farmers' bores still work. They don't catch fire. They don't produce gas, unless they already produced gas before the CSG industry got there (a farmer's bore draining from a coal seam is effectively a CSG well, so it's no surprise).

Stock still eat grass right up the fence of the wellsite. There is no pollution. There is no danger. The property can run just as many stock as it could before CSG came alone, in fact in many cases the land has been improved with extra bores, fences, gates, roads.

The royalties paid to the farmer effectively drought-proof the property. That further allows the farmer to upgrade the productivity of the land with new dams etc if desired.

There is also a massive source of water going to waste that could effectively drought-proof the property in the literal sense, too - if the farmers were using the processed water from the RO plants for irrigation on a large scale. You could grow rice paddies in the middle of brown, baking Queensland. But unfortunately that doesn't seem to be happening yet, though I hear Origin has a pilot project and the others probably do too.

If anyone is interested, there is a facebook page called "Food & CSG" run by a farmer near Roma who is working collaboratively with Origin as they develop CSG on his property. He keeps them on the straight and narrow and doesn't accept anything less than absolute best practice. From his posts, it appears he has actually been pretty successful in driving changes to minimise disturbance of the land.

I wish the clowns down at Glenugie would take a leaf from this guy's book - he is doing far more to benefit his local community and the state in general than they are with their hysterical protests and their Metgasco witch hunt.

I see from the Glenugie protest page that people have been deliberately putting children as young as 10 into middle of the scuffle to get them arrested to draw attention to themselves. A few lonely voices of reason tried to point out that it is an extremely irresponsible act of child endangerment to be doing this, but these voices of reason got shouted down.

Two diametrically opposed methods for controlling the impact of CSG on the local environment, and "Food & CSG" is overwhelmingly the more effective.

Anybody interested, check out the "Food & CSG" page on facebook here:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Food-CSG/159368284147011?fref=ts

Some great photos of CSG in action.