With Australia already on NASA’s desertification watch, and the rapid ingress of salinity into the meagre 6% of land Australia relies upon to feed her people and those of other nations, one would think pumping highly saline water from deep coal aquifers onto the surface, in order to liberate methane gas, would be unthinkable.

Unfortunately not.  Hundreds of once-grazed hectares are also sacrificed to evaporation ponds in NSW & QLD to ‘store’ this waste water.  As the ponds dry out, salt storms carry hundreds of tonnes of wind-blown salt and other contaminants onto the surrounding agricultural land and into our river systems, scalding and poisoning the land and water.  

Allowing such willful environmental damage makes a mockery of regeneration work to stop the spread of salinity; of buy-backs to improve the quality and quantity of flows in the Murray Darling as we try to preserve what’s left of our food growing land.

Coal seam gas exploration in productive farming country? Are our State governments crazy? It’s about as welcome as a dose of salts!  Will our politicians wake up before the salt scalds are on their doorstep?