The West Australian's Daniel Mercer could not be further from the truth in his claim of a ‘crackdown’ by the Government in regulating the controversial and damaging practice of gas fracking ‘EPA tightens Fraccing rules’.
As community anxiety about the impacts of gas fracking builds in the USA and Eastern States after countless pollution incidents, the reality is the WA EPA has effectively turned a blind eye to this highly damaging activity in Western Australia.
Recently, a senior official in the Department of Mines and Petroleum (DMP) spoke about the possibility of a US-style fracking ‘frenzy’ in Western Australia. With such a prospect, and the veil of secrecy surrounding the industry, it is not surprising that the Conservation Council and the WA community have called for a moratorium on fracking in WA until adequate regulations are established.
We have already had one case where over a million litres of diesel was pumped at high pressure down a well in the environmentally sensitive Whicher Ranges near Busselton, without any form of Environmental Impact Assessment. In fact, there has not been any public environmental assessment of any of the fracking activities taking place across Western Australia, and recent decisions by the EPA have continued this trend.
CCWA has appealed these decisions, but we are yet to find out whether Environment Minister Hon. Bill Marmion will continue to let the fracking industry off the hook, or whether he will order an environmental assessment of these projects.
When CCWA challenged the EPA on why they were not requiring environmental assessment of fracking, their response was to publish a bulletin reiterating existing guidelines which do nothing to ensure that environmental assessment takes place. The West Australian has called this a ‘crackdown’ but in reality it is a massive back down to the fracking industry and their ‘trust-us, we know what’s best’ attitude.
Currently, the DMP require fracking proponents to submit an Environment Management Plan, however these plans are kept secret from the public (including the landholders) and even from State Parliament, with the agency claiming ‘commercial in confidence’. In fact, the regulators refuse to disclose ANY information about what chemicals are being pumped underground, what environmental monitoring is undertaken, what standards are being applied, the compliance (or otherwise) with these standards, or even where the fracking activities are planned.
Sadly, this situation is mirrored in other states, where temporary fracking moratoria have been put in place in Queensland and NSW, a Federal Parliamentary Inquiry is underway, and a Bill is before the Federal Parliament to take control over fracking regulations citing the inadequacy of the States to control this activity.
There is no way the community can have confidence in fracking in Western Australia with almost complete secrecy surrounding every aspect of its regulation. The EPA and the State Government must call 'time out' on fracking until we have the controls in place that will give us the confidence that our water and environment will not be permanently poisoned.
It may well be the gas industry's desire to have a ‘government crackdown’ reported while in reality they get away with no assessment of fracking projects. The West Australian newspaper, knowingly or otherwise has assisted them in this aim. The gas industry are well aware that the community has no confidence in the regulatory process (and they have even cited this as the biggest barrier to the development of the industry in WA ).
Soon we expect Australian Petroleum Industry Association will announce with a voluntary ‘industry code of conduct’ for fracking, which may well be a further means of deflecting and obfuscating the real issue of getting transparent regulation of the industry.
CCWA hopes we get some better reporting from the West Australian if the industry does pull that stunt.
