A state government audit that reported glowingly on NSW mine safety and environmental practices failed to detect a coal seam gas operation which repeatedly leaked contaminated water.
The omission has fuelled concern about the rigour of the audit, which was a Coalition election promise designed to ease concern about existing coal and coal seam gas exploration.
The results released last week found a high level of compliance. Of 1,355 safety and environmental conditions checked, only 11 significant breaches were detected at six separate mines.
The breaches included suspected dumping of drilling mud and a failure to properly rehabilitate a site.
But the audit, conducted in September and October, failed to detect serious incidents at coal seam gas drilling sites in the Pilliga woodland in north-west NSW. The sites had long been the subject of community concern and numerous breaches were self-reported by the owner Santos in February.
Santos found the sites’ previous operator, Eastern Star Gas, had serially breached environmental rules, including 16 spills or leaks of contaminated water. It also found evidence of error-ridden work practices, such as records lost, and land cleared apparently without approval.
The audit consisted of two phases: a “desktop audit” of all 187 coal and 49 coal seam gas exploration licences, then a more detailed field review of 20 coal and 22 coal seam gas operations.
The Minister for Resources and Energy, Chris Hartcher, said the results showed the industries were overwhelmingly meeting their safety and environmental obligations and that “robust systems are in place to alert authorities if any breach occurs”.
His spokeswoman said the government committed only to examining exploration licences.
The Eastern Star breaches related to an “assessment lease” which, alongside hundreds of production and mining leases, was not included in the audit.
The Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham questioned why assessment leases were excluded, claiming that community concern over damage to the Pilliga had helped trigger the audit.
“I don’t think [the government] wanted to audit them, because it would have turned up a heap of unsatisfactory environmental outcomes,” he said. It was in the government’s interests to produce a positive report “but the facts don’t back it up”.
The chief executive of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Pepe Clarke, questioned the government’s optimism about the results when more than 60 per cent of mines subject to a field audit breached their licence conditions at least once.
Most breaches were considered low risk.
“This audit put the fox in charge of the hen house,” Mr Clarke said, adding, “it didn’t look at government process at all, and that’s one thing people have very real questions about.”
The president of the NSW Farmers Association, Fiona Simson, said the “poor” audit result highlighted the need for stricter compliance on exploration activity to protect land and water.
But the chief executive of the NSW Minerals Council, Stephen Galilee, said the audit was “extensive” and showed the industry usually met its obligations.
A Santos spokesman said its exploration licences were found to be fully compliant, and it was continuing to upgrade the former Eastern Star operation.
