LANDHOLDER representatives are racing against time in a bid to secure greater protections for groundwater before a package of legislative amendments passes through the Queensland Parliament in less than two weeks’ time.
The Water and Other Legislation Amendment (WOLA) Bill is due to go before State Parliament for a final vote on November 23.
The Bill includes a new groundwater management regime that will oblige petroleum companies to “make good” impacts on bore water supplies and to mitigate impacts on natural springs caused by their mining activities, which involves the removal of significant volumes of groundwater.
However landholder groups say the proposed legislation stops well short of providing adequate protection for water bore users, and may force many into the civil court as a last resort to recover any loss of water quality caused by mining impacts, if any recourse exists.
The chief concern is that the existing legislation only requires make good provisions to be triggered when there is a “decline” in underground water levels. The make good provision will not be enacted if water quality is affected but there has been no decline in the water level.
Confusion also exists under the current legislation as to whether landowners will have recourse to the courts on such issues.
Calls by the Basin Sustainability Alliance, AgForce and the Queensland Farmers Federation for quality issues to be included in make good provisions did not make the State Government’s final draft of the WOLA Bill which will go before Parliament in 12 days’ time.
Dalby based lawyer Joshua Aylward of Shannon Donaldson Province Lawyers said the Government’s view was that quality issues were covered by the Environmental Protection Act, which explained why quality issues had not been included in the amendments to the Water Act.
However, he said the Environmental Protection Act only allowed the Department of the Environment to prosecute energy companies for quality issues if they had not abided by their environmental authorities, which allowed them to draw as much water as they needed out of groundwater systems.
“It is a bit of a grey area but our concern is that the existing Bill will only address damage to quality caused by drops in the aquifer exceeding the trigger threshold,” Mr Aylward said.
“It does not cover serious damage arising from what is known as methane migration or from increased salinity or the other major issues concerning contamination and cross contamination or rural bores.
Mr Aylward said the existing legislation put too much emphasis on the “make good” agreements that energy companies have to enter into landowners, many of whom may not bother getting legal advice and who may assume the EPA will look after things.
“The EPA is currently suggesting it has no jurisdiction over the groundwater. If the Environmental Authorities don’t clearly address the quality issue and impose a clear duty to stop if “make good” isn’t adequate or possible, there would be enormous damage and no legal recourse.
“If that’s not done or made clear, then DERM/EPA may have little or no ability to help when a landowner’s groundwater quality has been affected. If a landowner loses their quality water for x amount of months, or who has lost all his cattle because of the lack of quality water, the department can’t help him.”
Basin Sustainability Alliance chair Ian Hayllor said it was pleasing to see the Government address some critical issues within the WOLA Bill, however, the legislation had clearly not gone far enough.
“Within 18 months or so, there will be thousands of bore owners forced into make-good agreements covering thousands and thousands of water bores,” Mr Hayllor said.
“We are already seeing unexplained impacts on groundwater quality and water levels in CSG areas of Queensland.
“We struggle with the fundamental issue of how on earth CSG companies are going to make-good high security water in 10-50 years’ time.
“BSA is strongly of the view that every attempt must be made by the CSG industry to preserve the local and regional water balance if this industry is to have any chance at making good water longer term.”
Queensland Farmers Federal chief executive Dan Galligan said that while the existing legislation was not perfect, it was important for a groundwater management regime to be established to ensure the cumulative impacts of the three major CSG export projects approved for Queensland could be properly considered.
“Part of the problem we’ve all got is that we all want a perfect system, but we all want a system implemented, so further procrastination may well be worse than not doing anything and waiting for the perfect system.
“Our greatest concern is that nothing is looking at cumulative impact on groundwater, this will start to look at it, but it certainly won’t start until the legislation is passed, so everyone has been caught between a rock and a hard place.”
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