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 …)

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 …)

The Queensland government has laid charges against a mining company for allegedly contaminating groundwater with cancer-causing chemicals.

The state’s Department of Environment and Resource Management has laid charges against Cougar Energy after a gas well ruptured at a site south of Kingaroy where the company was trialling underground coal gasification.

DERM’s acting director-general Terry Wall said in a statement Cougar Energy has been charged with three counts of breaching conditions of its environmental authority under the Environmental Protection Act 1994. (Read on …)

Arrow Energy could be slapped with a $50,000 fine for failing to immediately report a gas leak in Queensland.

The state government has accused the company of showing contempt for strict rules governing such incidents.

It took Arrow two hours to alert authorities that gas and salty water were bursting from one of its coal seam gas wells on a farm west of Dalby.

The rupture happened on Sunday after workers uncapped it to install a pump for gas production. It was successfully capped on Monday.

Mining Minister Stirling Hinchliffe said that Arrow or its contractors could face a hefty fine of up to $50,000 if their response was found lacking.

‘‘The tardiness in reporting this matter is unacceptable and it shows contempt for the rules and no respect for the landholder or regulating authorities,’’ Mr Hinchliffe told parliament today.

In a separate incident, a diesel spill on Arrow’s Moranbah gas fields yesterday had been contained and contaminated soil would be removed, Mr Hinchliffe told parliament.

SYDNEY is a step closer to reducing its reliance on coal-powered energy, with the launch of Australia’s first commercial trigeneration network.

The project, which links the energy use of two buildings across the harbour, uses natural gas to produce electricity on site, capturing any waste heat to provide heating and air conditioning.

Electricity generated at Coca-Cola Place, a high-rise office building in North Sydney, is also provided to Deutsche Bank Place in the CBD. Trigeneration can be up to three times more efficient than coal-fired power stations, where the waste heat escapes into the atmosphere.

The lord mayor, Clover Moore, said: ”This is Australia’s first open commercial trigeneration precinct, delivering a more efficient way to generate power, heat and cooling.”

As part of its Sustainable Sydney 2030 plan, Sydney City Council aims to produce 70 per cent of the city’s energy needs locally from trigeneration systems within the next 20 years. (Read on …)