Narrabri pollution concerns doubted

The NSW Department of Planning has downplayed a key concern raised by opponents of Santos’s $3.6bn Narrabri gas project.

A final decision by the IPC is due by September 4. Picture: Bloomberg

The NSW Department of Planning has downplayed a key concern raised by opponents of Santos’s $3.6bn Narrabri gas project, saying it failed to see how widespread contamination of the Great Artesian Basin would occur should the controversial development proceed.

The state’s Independent Planning Commission held meetings on July 28 with NSW planning, environment and water experts after a public hearing raised concerns over “knowledge gaps” in crucial modelling for the project.

Among the chief concerns raised by critics of the proposed gas facility was the potential for the basin and surrounding aquifers to be poisoned due to underground drilling, putting in danger both local farms and the region’s agricultural products produced from the land.

Asked by IPC commissioner Snow Barlow whether a “spill” could contaminate the Great Artesian Basin, a top NSW Planning bureaucrat said it struggled to see the risk of such an event occurring.

“We know the community keeps raising this, but we’re really struggling to see (that) if these things do occur, you know, that that would be very localised and the issues would be not significant in terms of impacts on other users,” Mike Young, executive director of energy resources and compliance at the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, told the IPC.

“Unless you’re able to point a particular example, Snow, that we haven’t contemplated, I guess we’re struggling to see what the risk really is in regard to those matters.”

The NSW Planning Department recommended the development in June.

The IPC — responsible for recommending the fate of the controversial development — has just concluded a six-day public Narrabri hearing with over 400 speakers presenting to the panel.

Most oppose the project.

A final decision by the IPC is due by September 4.

The gas producer touts the development — which could supply half the state’s gas needs — as a solution to the tight east coast market by undercutting LNG imports and offering the cheapest new supply source in the state if it does get the nod from planning tsars.

IPC counsel Richard Beasley also asked the Water Expert Panel for its opinion about a common complaint during the hearing: that the chief scientist’s recommendations from a coal-seam gas review in 2014 had not all been acted on or put into place.

Having “looked at those recommendations, I couldn’t see any that prevented the assessment of this project, that any had to be — of the chief’s scientist’s recommendations — had to be put in place before you could conduct a thorough assessment of this particular project. Do any of you have a view in relation to that?” Mr Beasley asked the Water Expert Panel.

Peter Cook, chairman of the four-member independent Water Expert Panel that was first engaged to review Santos’s ­environmental impact statement in 2017, responded by stating the project could proceed provided certain steps were taken.

“There’s nothing there that prevents us from reaching the conclusion we already have that this project can proceed provided a number of steps are taken and that’s what we’ve said,” Professor Cook said.

“I mean, we’ve not said ‘Look, everything’s perfect, nothing to see here. Move on’.

“What we’ve said is ‘Look, it has the potential to move on. These are the conditions that we believe should be placed upon it in moving ahead’.”