Urgent need for fossil fuels drives us to extremes

Society’s urgent need to find more fossil fuels is driving us to extremes.

One of those extremes is our search for coal seam gas; a search that has taken explorative companies to the edges, and under, communities.

Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hannam tells his reader that “CSG more trouble than it's worth for AGL”.

Hannam reports: “Back in December 2013, when Hunter Water, the state agency managing Newcastle's sewage network, learned energy giant AGL was seeking a place to dispose of wastewater from a pilot coal seam gas field, its management wanted none of it.

“For one thing, the gas field was about 100 kilometres to the north of Hunter Water's zone, and the agency's policy was to reject external waste. More to the point, it viewed the dangers as too high to rely on local waste processing sites to remove all potentially harmful chemicals before discharging the remaining water into its network.”