No excuse for hiding the details of toxic chemicals

By badly failing the transparency test in relation to one of the nation’s most contaminated sites, the Palaszczuk government has sparked fear and anger among Darling Downs farming communities and the public over toxic chemicals. As revealed on Saturday’s front page, cyanide and the highly carcinogenic chemical benzene were detected in April last year in bores on public land, 700m outside the boundary of the former Linc Energy underground coal gasification (UCG) project at Hopeland, 166km northwest of Toowoomba. The site is near prime farming land. Yet the government kept the information secret from nearby landowners and the local council.

From 2000 to 2013, the now defunct company Linc Energy, initially in a joint venture with the state-owned CS Energy, ran an experimental project on the site. It generated gas by setting fire to underground coal seams. The operation was shut down by the Environment Department. In 2018, the then-­liquidated company was fined $4.5m after being convicted on five charges of wilfully and unlawfully causing environmental harm, after the pilot plant released toxic gases and chemicals into soil, air and water. Since then, the government has spent tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars cleaning up and monitoring the site.

Repeated testing of bores over the past 18 months has shown levels of benzene, a chemical linked to causing leukaemia and other blood cancers, at levels up to 25 times the maximum limit allowed in drinking water ­quality and livestock watering guidelines. Cyanide levels in the bores have been found to be up to 10 times the same standards. Testing of water bores on nearby farms and properties has not found any trace of UCG by-­products. The bore where the toxic chemicals were found in April last year is 700m from the Linc site boundary, on government land.

After The Weekend Australian broke the story, Queensland’s Environment Minister, Meaghan Scanlon, said landholders should have been told. That is one lesson from the scandal, and her government needs to learn it.

Ms Scanlon said details were not put on to the publicly ­accessible land contamination register because the levels of cyanide and benzene “didn’t reach the threshold for it to be uploaded”. As Environment Department scientists wrote in one document: “The immediate risk to health and safety of landholders is low.’’

The community deserves to be given the full picture, however. The government must also explain its recent decision to transfer responsibility for monitoring the site to the Department of Resources from the Department of Environment and Science. And the latter department needs to explain why it allowed Linc to use an experimental technology such as UCG in 2000.

UCG has also been used in Russia and South Africa. It operates differently from coal-seam gas, which is natural gas trapped in underground coal seams by water and ground pressure. Wells are drilled until they reach the coal seams to extract the gas. Not all coal-seam gas involves fracking, where water is pumped into the ground under pressure to break up the host rock.

At a time when Australia, like much of the world, needs reliable gas supplies, governments have a serious responsibility to ensure gas is extracted safely, with stringent precautions to ensure as few environmental impacts on local communities, farming land and water tables as possible.

Queensland has a strong record of gas exploration, extraction and export. In the interests of transparency to allay public health concerns and to protect a vital industry, the Palaszczuk government needs to release full details of the side effects of UCG on the Darling Downs.