Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
development is strong.
56
However, the possibility might be considered that,
for the best land and with a full economic accounting of costs as well as
benefits, the economic advantage of CSG is not so compelling. CSG offers the
prospect of several decades of lucrative extraction but it is reasonable to
expect environmental costs, some of them potentially substantial in cumu-
lative effect, to continue perhaps for long after the gas is gone.
1
Furthermore,
the economic benefits of CSG are not assured: while current projections are
for high and stable commodities prices for the life of the planned projects,
the extractive industries historically have experienced cycles of boom and
bust.
13,14
At best CSG is a transition energy technology and we do not know
how long its window of opportunity will be.
3.2.5 Coastal and Marine Environments. There is a massive on-going ex-
pansion of port and terminal capacity along the Queensland coast, pur-
pose-built to serve huge coal transport ships and mega-tankers for LNG.
Existing coal ports near Gladstone are being expanded and a new LNG fa-
cility is under construction. Four planned coal ports would extend almost
1000 miles north to Wongai, far up the Cape York Peninsula. The im-
pacted coastal strip parallels the Great Barrier Reef, a World Heritage site
that parallels the coastline typically fewer than fifty miles offshore.
Already the Reef is under pressure from coral bleaching and is threatened
by climate warming. In 2011 a bund (i.e. retaining) wall in the Gladstone port
leaked, leaching dangerous chemicals into the harbour and was suspected of
causing morbidity and mortality of fish, turtles and dugong, and a sharp
drop in the local fishing catch. The cause of the breach is disputed - the
Ports Corporation blames heavy rain and floods - but a reasonable inference
is that the millions of tonnes of dredging and dumping undertaken made
the wall susceptible to the intense rain and flooding that occurred.
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Major environmental issues include the volume of dredging and dumping
that will accompany the proposed expansion of facilities and the impact of
greatly increased trac of mega-ships in the narrow and shallow waterway
separating the Reef from the shoreline.
The UNESCO World Heritage Center is considering placing the Reef on the
List of World Heritage in Danger. The relevant committee's recent resolution
requested that Australia ''...not permit any new port development or asso-
ciated infrastructure outside of the existing and long-established major port
areas within or adjoining the (Great Barrier Reef)...''.
58
Planned projects
that would be affected include the Balaclava Island Coal Export Terminal,
the Fitzroy Terminal Project and the Wongai Project, which are arguably the
most damaging of the proposed expansions due to their location in largely
undeveloped or near-pristine areas.
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3.2.6 CSG and Rural Communities. CSG operations have a variety of im-
pacts on nearby rural communities. The development phase employs
many more workers than the subsequent operations phase, so commu-
nities must cope with a relatively sudden increase in demands for private
