Potential Depletion and Pollution Due To Coal Seam Gas Extraction
On 21 February 2011, ABC Four Corners revealed that significant concerns were being expressed about depletion and chemical damage to the Great Artesian Basin as a result of coal seam gas extraction. In one incident, reported in the program, the Queensland Gas Company (QGC) 'fracked' its Myrtle 3 well connecting the Springbok aquifer to the coal seam below (the Walloon Coal Measures) in 2009, in the process releasing 130 litres of a potentially toxic chemical into the Great Artesian Basin. QGC admitted the incident, but did not report it to authorities for 13 months . The safety data sheet QGC had submitted for the fracking chemical was derived from the United States, incomplete and 10 years out of date Over 30 chemicals may be used in the process of 'fracking' and their long term impact on aquifers and the agriculture and people supported by them is unknown.
Read more about this topic: Great Artesian Basin
Famous quotes containing the words potential, pollution, due, coal, gas and/or extraction:
“Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of great sculpture. The silent bear no witness against themselves.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Like the effects of industrial pollution ... the AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies reason.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948)
“Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may will call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man’s soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Logic is the last scientific ingredient of Philosophy; its extraction leaves behind only a confusion of non-scientific, pseudo problems.”
—Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970)