THE coal seam gas company Santos has admitted more than a dozen instances of pollution occurred at drilling sites in the Pilliga woodland in north-west NSW, many of them not reported to the government in an apparent breach of environmental monitoring rules.
A damning report released by the company found that the site's previous operator, Eastern Star Gas, had made serial breaches of environmental rules in contradiction of many of its public statements about environmental protection.
It identified 16 spills or leaks of contaminated water in addition to the four it had already acknowledged, and recorded work practices riddled with errors and casual mistakes.
The Herald visited the site yesterday and saw first-hand swathes of skeletal, dead trees and discoloured earth that contrasted sharply with the surrounding bushland, which is regarded as the greatest remaining temperate woodland in eastern Australia.
''The public shouldn't accept what has happened here, and neither do we,'' Santos's vice-president for eastern Australia, James Baulderstone, said.
''We wanted to get out on the front foot and tell people everything we know about Eastern Star's practices … there has been a system of failing to report, of not meeting reporting requirements.''
Santos said it had scaled back its drilling and would concentrate on remediating damaged woodland and reviewing all work practices on the site, which has about 30 operating coal seam gas wells. The pollution discovered by Santos ranged from serious spills of saline water into woodland and waterways to more minor lapses, such as kangaroos drowning in a water storage area and not being reported.
Many problems stemmed from a treatment plant at the site that processed contaminated water from within coal seam gas wells, which ''suffered from multiple leaks and incidents''.
But the extent of the environmental damage suffered in the area around this plant is unknown because records were lost or kept in a diversity of databases.
In addition to the pollution, some land clearing has taken place on the site apparently without the legally required government approval.
The NSW government is still investigating the extent of the environmental damage, which was brought to light by environment campaigners who commissioned tests on water in the nearby Bohena Creek.
The government is continuing to gather samples from the site. "The EPA investigation into water pollution of Bohena Creek is advancing with further field inspections and sampling undertaken this week," a spokeswoman for the Office of Environment and Heritage said.
The Northern Inland Council for the Environment and the Wilderness Society said Santos's report confirmed their views, and the company should leave the area.
''Santos statements today vindicate our claims that coal seam gas operations in the Pilliga over the last year have been a complete mess, creating a risky environmental disaster zone,'' a spokeswoman, Carmel Flint, said.
A local wool farmer, Tony Pickard, has been documenting pollution in the area for more than a year but has been ignored by the company and the government. ''When I saw this on the 30th of December, this was all as black as the [ace] of spades,'' he said as he stood in an area of dead trees he referred to as ''the kill zone''.
The NSW Greens want a moratorium on all coal seam gas drilling until it is proved safe.
''Twenty incidents from around 35 pilot gas wells is a high ratio,'' the Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham said. ''How many incidents will there be if Santos are allowed to drill their planned 1100 coal seam gas wells in the Pilliga forest?''
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