Council snubs Rous Water

Richmond Valley Council is refusing to share information with Rous Water about any new coal seam gas mining or exploration applications.

A letter from Rous general manager Kyme Lavelle was sent to all of the constituent councils (Lismore, Ballina, Byron and Richmond Valley) asking that any requests for CSG mining or exploration be forwarded to Rous for evaluation and comment. But when Richmond Valley councillor Donella Kinnish put it up as a notice of motion at a meeting on April 19, she failed to get a seconder, meaning she could not even speak on the issue.

“It’s not a big ask. This is our local water utility, what’s wrong with them commenting?” Cr Kinnish said.

Rous Water chair Richard Staples said the state government was obliged to inform municipal councils of any mining applications, but not county councils, hence their request for information.

“We (Rous council) voted to write to state government agencies to get whatever information we can on aquifers in the area, which is of great interest to Rous because those water sources could be impacted by CSG, so we’ve asked for that and we’ve asked that if any of the councils in the area get an application (for mining or exploration), we would like to know and could they forward that on to Rous,” Cr Staples said.

Cr Staples said he was surprised that Richmond Valley Council would not agree to the request.

“I thought it would be a straight forward matter to co-operate with the county council and accede to our request. And without getting into the issues and rights and wrongs of coal seam gas mining, I would have thought it was a matter of courtesy... I would have assumed the Richmond Valley Council general manager (Brian Wilkinson) could have replied without needing to go to the elected body. It seems a simple administrative operational thing to do.”

But Mr Wilkinson told The Echo there were “political connotations” and he “formed the view that Council needed to be aware of it”. He went on to say that if a new application for CSG mining or exploration was received, the Council would determine who the interested parties were that needed to be notified.

Richmond Valley Mayor and Rous board member Col Sullivan said he and fellow councillor Stuart George had not supported the Rous motion to write to the state government and local councils and therefore did not support the request in the letter.

Mining company Metgasco has an approval for a conventional gas-fired power station near Casino and Petroleum Exploration

Licences for CSG across the Northern Rivers region and a proposal for a gas pipeline running from Casino to Ipswich. Mayor Sullivan said “the experience of Richmond Valley Council with Metgasco has been very positive” and he didn’t see any need to support the request from Rous Water.

“I’ll concede that across the border in Queensland things haven’t been done as I would want to happen in Casino, but we are well satisfied with environmental protection measures they (Metgasco) are taking and the majority of Council are in favour of what has happened at this point in time and until there is evidence of any environmental or water contamination, Council is not prepared to stop gas mining in the area,” Mayor Sullivan said.

When The Echo pointed out it was a request to share information, not to stop any mining, Mayor Sullivan said he would have “no problem with that”.

“I called for a seconder (of Cr Kinnish’s motion) but there wasn’t one. That’s the way it goes,” he said.

Cr Kinnish said she was disappointed no-one was prepared to second her motion.

“I didn’t think I’d get support for a moratorium like other councils, but this at least is showing respect for what other councils are doing and considering we have two councillors on the Rous board and another who is a past chair, you would have thought someone could second it so we could at least have had a debate,” Cr Kinnish said. “I thought ‘this isn’t a really big ask like a moratorium, let’s co-operate and adhere to the request by Rous Water’.

“I really can’t put my finger on why. Metgasco has a strong presence, but their representatives come to community forums, like the Environmental Defender’s Office one back in February. If they say they are here and not damaging the environment what’s the issue?

“Why don’t we have openness and transparency rather than lack of information, and let Rous see the DAs?”