Cougar Energy will fight a government order that it cease a controversial underground coal gasification project in southeast Queensland.

The Department of Environment and Resource Management announced on July 7 that no further coal gasification would be permitted at the project, near Kingaroy.

It made final a decision to suspend the trial in July last year, when traces of the cancer-causing chemical benzene was found in groundwater monitoring bores on the site.

The find angered locals, who have waged a campaign against the plant.

The department has asked Cougar to remove all infrastructure from the site, unless the landowner agrees to keep it.

It also ordered the company to treat and dispose of any contaminated water in surface storages and clean up groundwater.

In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange today, Cougar Energy said it had received formal notice of DERM’s decision on July 19.

“Cougar Energy Limited (ASX: CXY) advises that it will seek a review of the Queensland government’s decision to restrict the company’s activities at the Kingaroy underground coal gasification trial site,” it said.

The company said it had until August 2 to seek the internal review by DERM.

The department has also charged Cougar Energy with breaking the conditions of its environmental approval.

It’s accused of breaching operating permits by contaminating the site and failing to promptly notify authorities.

The Environment Court has fined two Northland dairy farmers $51,000 between them for discharging effluent into waterways despite repeated warnings and notices to upgrade their systems.

Anthony Joseph Schluter of Pekerau, about 14km northeast of Kaitaia, and James Dodunski, of JKD Farms, appeared for sentencing in an Environment Court in Whangarei yesterday.

JKD Farms was charged with two counts of discharging farm dairy effluent into separate tributaries and Schluter faced a single charge.

The convictions and penalties come after the latest survey by the Northland Regional Council, which laid the charges, showed only 43 per cent of dairy farms in the region fully complied with the effluent discharge conditions of their resource consent. (Read on …)

ONE of the country’s biggest property developers has been fined $200,000 by the NSW Land and Environment Court for unlawfully clearing 23 hectares of native vegetation.

Walker Corporation, which has more than $4 billion of developments under way across Australia, was given a record fine for a company under the Native Vegetation Act for clearing the land at a property near Wilton, south-west of Sydney, in 2006 and 2007.

The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) brought the case against Walker Corporation and persuaded the court the company cleared seven native species including black she-oak and narrow-leaved ironbark. (Read on …)

Bay of Plenty dairy farmers were reminded of the serious penalties for polluting after four were prosecuted last week for various degrees of contamination to waterways.The two businesses and three individuals (3 eastern Bay, 1 western Bay) were sentenced last week in the Environment Court in Tauranga.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council Water Management Group Manager Eddie Grogan said these prosecutions showed us that some farmers in our region were still not carrying out the necessary checks.

“All four dairy cases were a result of poor management of effluent systems, including ponds and irrigators,” Mr Grogan said.

The two companies and three farmers received significant fines totalling more than $118,000, which reflected the recent increase in penalties available to the Environment Court after an amendment to the Resource Management Act. (Read on …)

A COMPANY that contaminated groundwater with cancer-causing chemicals will be banned from any future underground coal gasification activities in Queensland.

The Queensland government has ordered Cougar Energy to shut down its trial UCG plant near Kingaroy in southern Queensland.

The decision was made after the company was found to have contaminated groundwater at the site with cancer-causing chemicals including benzene.

It took two months to notify government authorities of the incident, in breach of strict environmental rules.

The Department of Environment and Resource Management today downplayed the risk for nearby landholders, saying the contamination was confined to the site.

Acting director general Terry Wall said the company would be forced to rehabilitate it, including decontaminating aquifers, and was facing court action over its activities.

Asked if authorities would ever again contemplate allowing Cougar to operate in Queensland, Mr Wall told the ABC: “Certainly not in respect of underground coal gasification.” (Read on …)

12 July 2011. Toowoomba Chronicle

CHARGES have been laid against mining company Carbon Energy for allegedly breaching conditions of its environmental authority and failing to report an environmental incident.

The charges relate to a spill and the unapproved disposal of process water in 2009 at Carbon Energy’s underground coal gasification trial site, 40km west of Dalby.

Department of Environment and Resource Management acting director-general Terry Wall said Carbon Energy had been charged with three offences of breaching conditions of its environmental authority and one offence of failing to notify the department of threatened environmental harm under the Environmental Protection Act 1994.

A director of Carbon Energy has also been charged with one offence of failing to ensure the company notified the department of threatened environmental harm. (Read on …)

New Zealand and Australia will work to integrate their emissions trading schemes to create a bigger and more efficient trans-Tasman carbon market.

The implementation of the ETS schemes in both countries was a key issue at annual talks between Finance Minister Bill English and his Australian counterpart, Treasurer Wayne Swan, in Wellington yesterday.

The talks aimed to move ahead long-running negotiations to create a single economic market.

Australia’s new ETS will tax its 500 worst polluters A$23 (NZ$29.50) for every tonne of carbon they produce from next July. (Read on …)

Australia appears to be locked into carbon taxation under a scheme that will directly slug the nation’s 500 biggest polluters, shut down its dirtiest coal-fired electricity generators and compensate business and millions of households for the ensuing rises in living costs.

Within four years the tax will be rolled into a carbon emissions trading scheme that Prime Minister Julia Gillard said would plug into a widening international market and which will almost certainly affect New Zealand.

Gillard and Prime Minister John Key have said the two nations’ emissions trading schemes should work as closely as possible together, and last month agreed to set up a senior officials group to determine how this could be achieved.

The new tax, announced yesterday by Gillard, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Climate Change Minister Greg Combet, is now certain to pass through Parliament after Lower House endorsement by Greens MP Adam Bandt and independents Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Andrew Wilkie.

This gives Gillard the votes she needs to pass the legislation to the Senate, where the Greens hold the balance of power. (Read on …)