australian identity: Where Is The Water Really Going And To Whom ?

The Great Water Con, MDBP has little to do with "environment" and everything to do with mining !

How much water will the CSG industry use?

Australia's Great Artesian Basin and its underground aquifers are a vital source of water; farmers and other bore users are given allocations for their use.
By 2014, the Commonwealth will have spent nearly $150 million under the Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative, capping bores and fixing pipes to conserve water.
The coal seam gas industry is entitled to remove massive amounts of water from groundwater systems.
The Queensland Government says that if CSG mining causes groundwater levels to drop below specified "trigger" points then companies must "make good" to affected water users. The trigger points are:

a five-metre drop in bore-water levels for sandstone and fractured rock aquifers;
a two-metre drop in bore-water levels for alluvial aquifers; and
a 20-centimetre drop in the water table surrounding springs.

While the Queensland Government has set out the make-good arrangements, there is concern over how these will actually work in practice.
For instance, Rabobank wants more certainty on the question of how CSG will pay for future reparations because some of the impacts may not be evident for decades. The agri-bank wants CSG companies to take out insurance for this.
The Queensland Farmers Federation has sought more information on how the burden of proof will be established and on making good cumulative impacts.
Others such as the Basin Sustainability Alliance want to know how make-good will be enforced.
In addition to these provisions, the forthcoming Murray Basin Plan will set limits on groundwater extraction, including by the CSG industry. The states must enact these limits by 2019.
There is a fierce debate about the amount of water the coal seam gas industry will extract from underground, and what impact it may have on the sustainability of the Great Artesian Basin.
The industry suggests it will pull out somewhere between 126 gigalitres and 280 gigalitres a year, while the National Water Commission puts the figure above 300 gigalitres a year. Others, including the Water Group advising the Federal Government, suggest it is higher still.
The infographic below compares the various published figures on water extraction by the coal seam gas industry.
To place this into perspective, those estimates have been compared to current household use and how much water is currently being extracted from the Great Artesian Basin.

Water use per year ( in gigalitres )

Current water use by Queensland households - 308

Groundwater extraction by Queensland farmers and other bore users from Great Artesian Basin - 540

Projected water use by CSG companies QGC, Santos, Origin & BG International - 1,500

Infographic sources ³

The water story: Coal seam gas uses enormous amounts of water, one of Australia's scarcest resources.

What's in all that water?

Water is pulled out of the ground as part of the coal seam gas mining process, because the gas - methane - is in the coal seam and held there at great pressure by water and other sediment layers.
To release the gas, the water needs to be pumped out of the coal seam and up to the surface in a process known as 'dewatering'.

CSG water release

The Queensland Government has confirmed the toxicity of coal seam gas water to aquatic organisms is assessed against environmental standards after it is released into rivers and not prior to discharge.

Read full story

The water that is pumped from the ground as part of the coal seam gas extraction process is very salty and contains a range of naturally present chemicals. It may also include heavy metals and radionuclides.
Once at the surface, the water is stored in huge ponds, treated with other chemicals and then put through desalination plants on the gas field.
This final process removes the salt, which is then stored in salt brine ponds for later disposal.
If the coal seam gas company treats the water to a standard where it can be used "beneficially" then that water is no longer considered "waste water".

How much salt are we talking?

Estimating how much salt will be produced depends how much water is extracted.
If you take the mid-scale figure provided by the coal seam gas industry of approximately 200 gigalitres of water being extracted each year, and couple that with information about how salty coal seam gas water is, you arrive at 21 million tonnes of waste salt being produced over the next 30 years.
However, if you use the National Water Commission's estimates of 300 gigalitres of water each year, this suggests 31 million tonnes of salt will be produced over the same timeframe.
The amount of waste salt being produced is important because the coal seam gas industry has not yet come up with a solution of what to do with it all.

CSG waste products: Find out more about how much salt is generated, and what the industry plans to do with it all.

What chemicals are involved?

Treatment of coal seam gas water is designed to remove unwanted contaminants.
However, some chemicals remain in treated CSG water.
They can include boron, silver, chlorine, copper, cadmium cyanide and zinc.
At the concentrations present in the water being released, many of the chemicals would be toxic to aquatic organisms.
However, environmental water quality standards apply to water in the overall environment after the release, rather than specifically to the water that is being released.

What happens to all the water?

Look at this water. It is a fantastic opportunity for Queensland."

QGC managing director Richard Cottee
(QGC ASX announcement: July 4, 2008)

Is the extraction of water from coal seam gas wells an opportunity or a problem? It's one thing to remove massive quantities of water from the ground; the real question is what to do with it.
The coal seam gas industry says the excess water can be used to irrigate farming land or to boost river flows.
But first it has to be treated to remove contaminants such as salt and toxic chemicals. That takes time, land for storage ponds, and money.
There's one other question: if you take millions of litres of water out of the ground and return it to the rivers, what does this do for Australia's water ecology?
The following graphic explains how the water treatment process works.

Case study: CSG water facilities near Chinchilla

The soon to be opened Kenya to Chinchilla pipeline is a case study in the new water landscape being created in parts of regional Australia because of the coal seam gas industry.
QGC has paid SunWater - Queensland's state water provider - $50 million to build a 20-kilometre underground water pipe from its Walloon Fairway gas fields to the Chinchilla Weir.
The pipeline is capable of transporting 100 megalitres of treated coal seam gas water each day into the Chinchilla Weir.
From there, it will be used by farmers and to supplement Chinchilla's water supply.
The water has been treated by QGC to what's called a "beneficial standard", which means it's suitable for drinking water and agricultural production.
QGC is giving the water to SunWater for nothing, and SunWater is offering farmers treated coal seam gas water at very low prices.
Farmers will pay only $4 a megalitre, but will be fined $160 a megalitre if they don't take the water they have agreed to.
The intention is to encourage farmers to build dams on their properties so they can store the water, thereby transferring the cost of CSG water storage onto the user.
This carrot and stick model delivers farmers insurance against drought and it also guarantees the mining companies they can dispose of their water.

Isn't it GRAND !! The BIG money men and their friends the Australian Legislators are set to be living the dream, but what of the Australian farmers and Australian people ?

We are ALL hostages to this agenda and our Children and their Children will pay the price for this greed we see.

It is a FACT that all the poisonous chemicals cannot be removed completely from this CSG waste water ( brine ). So do we allow these Traitors to force this toxic mess upon us to irrigate our food and to drink ?

Much of this agenda is written in to law before the people are even told about it.......

Always the last to know, it reeks of Stalin.

CSG waste products: Find out more about what chemicals are produced as byproducts of coal seam gas
Water release: The Queensland Government has confirmed the toxicity of coal seam gas water to aquatic organisms is assessed against environmental standards after it is released into rivers and not prior to discharge.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/specials/coal-seam-gas-by-the-numbers/

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Adelaide Now ( The Advertiser )
Jan 24 2013

Mr Bond ( LINC Managing Director ) said there was the potential for a US-style "shale oil" boom in SA.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week the US could pass Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer this year, thanks to the shale oil explosion.
Shale oil extraction involves using new technologies to drill vertically and then horizontally for distances of more than one kilometre through shale rocks that contain oil.
The process was once prohibitively expensive but advances have created a new oil boom in the US.
Mr Koutsantonis said: "We have seen the hugely positive impact shale projects like Bakken and Eagle Ford have had on the US economy.
"There is still a long way to go, but investment in unconventional liquid projects in South Australia will accelerate as more and more companies such as Linc Energy and Altona prove up their resources."
Mr Bond said the potential in SA was "massive", but even at the lower end of estimates - about 3.5 billion barrels - it was still very large.
"If you look at the upper target, which is 103-233 billion barrels of oil, that's massive," he said.
"The opportunity of turning this into the next shale boom is very real.
"If the Arckaringa plays out the way we hope it will, and the way our independent reports have shown, it's one of the key prospective territories in the world at the moment." Mr Bond said each well could flow at 1000-2000 barrels per day.
"You put in 50 of them and that's a lot of oil," he said. "We have a very good idea that this will be an oil-producing asset."
Mr Bond said Linc had so far spent about $130 million in the Arckaringa Basin, drilling four deep wells and "a couple of dozen" shallower wells.
British company Altona Energy was scheduled to start drilling this month to discover more resources for a proposed coal to liquids and power project also in the Arckaringa Basin.
That project, which could cost up to $3 billion, would involve an open-cut coal mine and possibly a 560 megawatt power plant.
The Linc Energy reports, from consultants DeGolyer and McNaughton and Gustavson Associates, are available on the Australian Securities Exchange website.