Gas Meeting
Date: 08-Jun-08
Author: Peter Firminger
The Public Information Meeting held yesterday was well attended with a head count of 81 recorded.
It was pretty much as expected... Sydney Gas trying to educate the "scared and confused" people of Wollombi about the wonders of gas drilling and the misconceptions we have about the effect on the environment, our lifestyle and our property values.
In short it was insulting, patronising and as far as I believe, left people more angry that when we walked into the room.
The message to Sydney Gas from this community was crystal clear: "We don't want you here!"
I'm not going to bother with any minutes of the meeting (though I have added my observations below - 10-Jun-08), I know some others took notes and if you have the time, I would like to have other people's opinions of the meeting posted here. Either add them yourself as a comment or a news story (if you are a member) or email them to gas@wollombi.nsw.au and I'll post them on your behalf - under your name.
I'd particularly like to thank Cr James Ryan and Cr Alison Davey for attending the meeting .
Sydney Gas supplied a CD-ROM of the REF documents which I have uploaded as supplied to this page.
The newspaper article from the Newcastle Herald (mentioned below) is available here as an image.
Click on the thumbnail for the full size scan of the page.
Comments (4)
Posted: 08-Jun-08 13:54 by Caroline Maul Permalink
Thank you Peter.
It was a good start, now we need to keep at it.
Posted: 10-Jun-08 00:14 by Peter Firminger Permalink
Following are my personal observations and opinions from the Sydney Gas meeting.
Sydney Gas treated the attendees of the meeting with utter contempt and blatant lies in a number of ways - some of them minor - but they build a convincing picture of their lack of research - and a fraudulent REF (Review of Environmental Factors).
The site maps supplied (the ones marked Appendix E) are all identical, apart from the metadata (the text table at the bottom). All of them list precisely the same slope (1-2 degrees to the east) and when oriented to the arial photograph (both aligned to north), they show a very different story. These "Draft" plans cannot continue to be in a draft form if you are about to start building them. Do the research and resubmit the correct plans with the real data from each site.
Sydney Gas are clearly submitting a duplicate for each site submission and not actually doing any research on the site, though they assure us (Colin assured me anyway) they have done an environmental, heritage and Aboriginal artifact study on each site.
The Wollombi and Paynes Crossing (Stockyard Creek) sites are both identified as being in the Singleton LGA - I have been assured that this is not simply an oversight, it gets them past a level of scrutiny, and it also clearly shows that the Department (DPI I believe) isn't checking any of the documentation.
The "experts" supplied to the Wollombi Meeting (to calm the poor confused citizens of Wollombi) were totally flummoxed by being warned of a real flood risk on the Wollombi site, much to the delight of the audience. "It's a 1 in 50 year event, and we'll have plenty of notice beforehand" said Colin Stace - followed by a roar of laughter from the locals who know better.
We are referred to as "Upper Hunter" as we are not in Newcastle which Sydney Gas refer to as "Lower Hunter".
Sydney Gas went to great lengths to show us painted boxes (which they were really chuffed about) to demonstrate that there is no visual impact with a production well, but couldn't explain how they were going to get the required pipelines in under the heritage-listed "Great North Road" to take the gas away, without months or years of ugly, inconvenient, noisy and polluting construction work. As I've said before, they will employ magic to achieve this.
We made it clear to these shareholder-driven candy stripers that we don't care about the two core holes, they are a minor inconvenience that we have no way of stopping anyway, but we DO care about what happens next - and we WILL stop that.
There is NOTHING available in any research to support the ridiculous claims of these people, that there is zero impact on the environment, that the water table, the Brook and creeks and alluvials won't be affected, that the lifestyle of the residents won't be affected by hundreds or thousands of truck movements, that local business won't suffer because of this long-term construction zone and the noise and visual pollution that it brings, that they can just come along and dig up the heritage-listed Great North Road to stick multiple pipelines under it and the surrounding pastures and pristine bushland.
They wouldn't elaborate on where a possible processing plant would be, and they denied the use of any harmful chemicals. What about the chemicals used to "fracture" the coal seam. Just sand and water. Yeah right Colin.
Caroline Maul unearthed an interesting fact in her single line of questioning, that the arrangement with the Wollombi "landholder" was not a lucky random choice, that he has a history of allowing access to Sydney Gas in the Bulga region.
They knew full well who to ask without arousing suspicion and a community uprising until it was too late. Then they did all the negotiations in secret and only after the date of commencement is announced and approved, they announce a public meeting - on a long weekend to minimise attendance - which actually occurs after the work commencement date.
Posted: 11-Jun-08 11:34 by Caroline Maul Permalink
After our meeting with Sydney last Saturday I was approached by The Newcastle Herald.
I had a photograph taken from our business looking across to the exploration drill site.
Fran Thompson asked me a few questions over the phone, I asked to put my objections down on paper. So I then set out in point form my concerns and objections and sent them via email.
As we all know the media doesn't always print what you say, I did make a mention the impact on tourism, my most important objection and concern was the enviromental impact on our fragile valley and it's huge impact on our historic convict trail and buildings.
The landowner has given permission for this exploration drill and owns land up and down the valley.
If this site is too wet or not suitable, he owns enough land to find a more suitable spot. Next time it could be across from historic Blair cottage or near the Wollombi graveyard.
There's is no place is this valley suitable for gas drilling!
We say NO to Sydney gas in Wollombi Valley.
Posted: 15-Jun-08 23:07 by john hannemann Permalink
I attended the metting at wollombi and as a member of the bulga action group observed the very clever SNOW JOB sydney gas did on the wollombi community. A bull sh*t statement re most off the coal seems in the hunter are dry seems so there is little concern regarding water from a coal seem causing polluting any water course.
I worked at Bulga Coal for 20 years and witnessed water being pumped out of the under ground into the old open cut pit non stop for months.
Don't take my word for what gas extration can do to our environment look to the good old U.S.A where vast areas have been raped extracting gas from coal seems. Use the web to educate yourself to sort out just how much bull sh*t there is in snow.
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