Thursday 13 November 2014
Gas and petroleum exploration and production licences cover 80% of the entire Australian Great Artesian Basin
Saturday 28 June 2014
Quote of the Week
Friday 20 June 2014
Abbott Government dismantles legislated "water trigger" protecting Australian communities from the rapacious demands of the mining industry and Nats MP Kevin Hogan fails to cross the floor as promised
Lock The Gate media release:
Nationals gut water
trigger: Hogan abandons promise to cross the floor
Tuesday 11 March 2014
Looking back at a time when the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association sometimes told the unvarnished truth
Note: My red bolding
Friday 3 January 2014
Will NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione risk another heavy handed political move against Northern Rivers anti-coal seam gas protestors in 2014?
Thursday 12 December 2013
Say hello to the Blick River Guardians
Friday 20 September 2013
Coal Seam Gas: an object lesson for Northern Rivers communities is coming out of Colorado USA
http://vimeo.com/74683562
Wednesday 31 July 2013
NO CSG IN THE NORTHERN RIVERS: Swampy's not amused and on his way to Canberra with as many of your letters as will fit in his saddlebags
## OPEN LETTER TO THE COMMUNITY ## Facebook 26 July 2013
To whom it may concern,
My name is Michael Franklin (Turtle or Swampy). My parents, grandparents, and great grandparents have been breeding horses, logging and farming in the Grafton area since the 1800s. We have a great love for the land and everything has been done with consideration to the future viability of our property to sustain a decent lifestyle. I worked in Queensland after going to TOCAL Agricultural College. I started as a Jackaroo and went through to Head Stockman for AA Company. I loved the way of life up there, the attitude was, do what you wanted as long as it wasn't at someone else's expense.
I have just returned from the CSG Gasfields around Tara/Chinchilla on a fact-finding tour. I went to peoples properties, whose bores were contaminated. Not drinkable, and no idea of if, or when the water will ever be drinkable. They have admittance from the company to interfering with the Aquatard, not the Aquifer so no responsibility taken. They have now had to build dams and if you know Queensland, you would realise that dams are there in the good years but when it comes dry, it's all bore water. What happens then? It is not just one farm, there are numerous and any farmer worth his salt knows that clean water is our most valuable resource.
I went to the Wiembiella Estate where the blockies live. This is a motley crew of people, who have bought a piece of Australia to live and raise their families in peace and quiet, only to have it shattered by being turned into an Energy Hub. Thousands of vehicles a week, hundreds of trucks, I mean this is in your face 24/7, it just never goes to sleep. Its total disregard for your fellow man, the land and the water. We drove 15km around a dam just being built to fill up with toxic water to be cleaned and pumped back into the river that feeds the Chinchilla water supply. All they are taking out is the salts, not the radioactive materials or the heavy metal elements. The water is also used to irrigate crops and to water feedlots. I have done my Quality Assurance, Training and Assessment course for Beef Cattle Production and I am concerned about the quality of what the Australian consumer may be eating or drinking. I have never considered fertilising my paddocks with lead, yet The Land newspaper have reported that up to 90kg/ha annually is going onto the fields irrigated with produced water. I expect that the meat will be sold on the domestic/local market due to stringent export quality standards. You are what you eat.
I think that reusing emissions and renewable is the answer to our power problem. Septics/sewage, piggeries, dairies, sawmills, and rubbish tips and biofuel can all produce power. Then there is solar, solar-thermal, wind and tidal energies. Its more than enough and the proof is out there.
I am riding to Canberra against CSG. I believe in respecting thy neighbour. Even if you don't like your neighbour, I don't believe that poisoning them is justifiable. Common decency says that you do not have the right to interfere with or threaten the wellbeing your neighbours. I will also be promoting Australian Owned, Australian Made and Australian Grown because I believe that we should be supporting Australian business and farming as a sustainable future rather than the inevitable bust that will follow the mining boom. I would rather see Australia as a food bowl than a gravel pit.
Mick Franklin
Glenugie
NSW
##LATEST ANNOUNCEMENT##
Franklin Horses will be running a postal service direct to Parliament House!
Departing from Grafton on the 21st of September 2013, and arriving in Canberra sometime in late November. All hand written letters of concern will be delivered direct to Parliament by way of Pony Express. Arrangements will be made for various collection points prior to departure and also along the way. Further announcements will be made regarding collection.
Tell 'em what you think and we'll take it to 'em!
Cheers
The Franklin Horses Team
Monday 29 July 2013
So Barnaby Joyce is in the Clarence Valley today
He also voted against The Greens motion in the Senate which read in part:
"That the Senate:....(b) calls on the Federal Government to: (i) abandon plans for damming the Clarence, Tweed, Richmond and Mann Rivers;" [C'wealth Hansard,Senate,proof issue,19 August 2007,p.p. 33-34].
He was still including mention of the Clarence catchment in his discussions on water supply in 2008:
"You can't create water with money. That means you have to think about bringing it from somewhere else, like the Gulf or the Clarence." [The Land, 13 August 2008]
Saturday 13 July 2013
Water raiders on the march again
Raiding our rivers
ON June 26 the NSWLC Standing Committee on State Development published a report Adequacy of water storages in New South Wales.
This report recommended that the NSW Government "review the environmental flow allocations for all valleys in New South Wales and make representations to the Commonwealth Government for it to review the environmental flow allocations for all valleys in New South Wales in relation to the Murray Darling Basin Plan" and told the government that "the priority given to environmental needs above water supply to industry and high security needs in regulated rivers under the Water Management Act 2000 is not sufficiently balanced" and recommended that it change this act to prioritise these other needs above environmental needs.
The committee that produced this report was dominated by the Liberal-Nationals Coalition and its oft-times ally, the Christian Democratic Party, so it should come as no surprise that the advice received by the O'Farrell Government heavily favours the interests of both irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin and the mining industry as it does not rule out damming and diverting water from the Northern Rivers to feed the insatiable water hunger of these two groups.
It is a general rule of thumb that it requires 1 to 2 tonnes of water to process 1 tonne of mined ore (USGS, 2012) and an individual coal seam gas well can require up to 1 million litres of drilling water (Metgasco, January 2013).
Irrigation water for crops can range from 2 to 5.5 million litres per hectare as a minimum to bring a crop to maturity in this state (NSW Dept Primary Industry, 2009).
The amount of water that would have to be drawn from the Clarence River systems to meet even part of what these two groups desire would potentially impact on the health of local rivers, local water security, local agriculture, local economies dependant on the fishing industry and tourism industries and the social and cultural life of local communities.
The Tweed and Richmond valley communities would possibly have similar concerns.
It would be useless to look to the North Coast Nationals to protect Northern Rivers interests, as the NSW National Party has never walked away from its 2008 state conference resolution to "support greater efforts to reduce the amount of eastern water lost to the ocean and campaign for more in-depth investigations into finding ways to turn this water inland" (My Daily News online, June 16, 2008).
It would also be useless to look to the Liberal Party to protect our interests, as the Upper House committee's recommendations echo the 2007 Howard-Turnbull push to dam and divert fresh water from the Clarence River catchment area and, the current Federal Opposition favours a "100 dams" plan according to a leaked draft discussion paper which makes mention of the Clarence and Mann rivers (The Daily Examiner, February 14, 2013).
Once again the Northern Rivers region is going to have to rely on its own community resources and lobbying abilities to combat any attempt to raid our river systems.
Now is the time to organise and act.
Thursday 27 June 2013
Nationals MP For Clarence Chris Gulaptis' weak-kneed response to the over 10,000 strong Northern Rivers 'No CSG' petition
A response from the community in The Daily Examiner 25 June 2013: