AGL says up to two megalitres of fresh water per day will be made available for local use as part of its proposed Extracted Water Management Strategy for the Gloucester Gas Project.
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It follows AGL’s announcement that it will invest in a desalination plant to remove salt from produced water extracted during stage one of the project.
The company is now seeking feedback from the community about how desalinated water could be used.
“Over the last few months it has been extremely dry in Gloucester and the surrounding areas and an additional freshwater resource would come in very handy if similar conditions arise in the future,” AGL’s manager of hydrogeology John Ross said.
“The freshwater could be applied to irrigation, but also new business enterprises that could benefit the area like forestry or even aquaculture.”
“One of the questions the community has asked is what happens to excess water in times of heavy rainfall.
“As part of the draft strategy we propose to store as much desalinated water as possible and only release this freshwater into the Avon River after heavy rainfall events.”
Opponents of AGL’s Gloucester operations Groundswell Gloucester has hit out at the proposed desalination plant.
“The announcement by AGL that they will now use reverse osmosis to purify produced water from CSG wells is nothing new,” chair Julie Lyford said.
“This method was promoted by Lucas-Molopo in their original proposal for the project six years ago.
“AGL has since tried to get way with the much cheaper option of spraying the polluted salty water, diluted with river water, on to pasture. This pasture was sold and fed to cattle in the district.”
AGL has also publicly released its first baseline water report on the monitoring bore network at the Waukivory Pilot site.
The Drilling Completion Report - Waukivory Groundwater Monitoring Bores contains baseline information on water levels and water quality from February 2012 to February 2014.'
For more information on the strategy click here