Coal seam water a growing hazard  

The Coureir Mail has an article on concerns about waste water from coal seam gas projects in Queensland - Coal seam water a growing hazard.

QUEENSLAND'S coal seam gas industry is being asked how it will deal with the Sydney Harbour-sized amount of potentially hazardous water it could produce each five years. Coal seam gas is seen as a key energy and economic source for the state.

Agricultural businesses, fearing damage to waterways and crop land, have been seeking an end to coal seam gas companies' main practice of leaving untreated in large pools the highly salty, poor-quality water displaced during extraction.

The Queensland Government has begun to respond to those concerns with a ruling last month that coal seam water was an environmental hazard for which safe disposal was needed.

"There are significant ecological risks associated with disposal of (CSG water) and, without treatment, the Government believes the beneficial uses of CSG water are limited," a Queensland infrastructure and planning department discussion paper said in May. ...

Nevertheless, 12.5 billion litres of coal seam water was produced in Queensland in 2007 and most went into evaporation ponds that range in size from one to 100 hectares.

The Government's May discussion paper said there were "generally widespread concerns about evaporation ponds and the long-term legacy associated with salt stored in them".

It said disposal of an annual volume of 100 billion litres of coal seam water - based on some estimates of the potential size of a liquefied natural gas industry using CSG - in evaporation ponds would require a 100sq km area within 15-30 years. Sydney Harbour contains about 500 billion litres of water. ...

The Queensland Government has now suggested the CSG industry co-operates to develop and fund a CSG water aggregation and disposal system to deal with coal seam water in the Bowen and Surat basins in central and southern Queensland.