Prof Willgoose spoke to The Scone Advocate last week about his knowledge and findings on coal seam gas exploration as he performed an independent peer review on the effects on water at Broke and Bulga.

The part time Scone resident attended the first meeting held by Santos at Bunnan in April as he has worked extensively researching AGL’s exploration south of Singleton.

The water expert has no involvement in the coal seam gas projects in the Upper Hunter, but attended the meeting as an informed Scone resident.

Prof Willgoose said some of the issues the Bunnan residents were concerned about were not worth worrying about, but they were right in worrying about the acquifers and the possible impacts on their bores.

“The most environmental damage is done in the exploration stage, if the company decides to frack a well it is done at the exploration stage, and it is fracking that largely does the damage,” he said.

Prof Willgoose said there were a series of techniques and methodologies, used at Broke, that could be applied at Bunnan with some modifications to prove if there would be an impact on acquifers.

“If the company says there is no impact on the acquifers there is a straight forward task to test that and Bunnan residents should demand that be done,” Prof Willgoose said.

“I am in discussions with the NSW Office of Water about the impacts and what can be done to test acquifers.”

The risk of draining wells, fracking interfering with other wells and gas being released out of wells were also mentioned by Prof Willgoose.

“If farmers don’t have water they don’t have water.

“It gets into the heart of the operational viability of farms,” he said.

“However, people must be aware that fracking problems are much worse in shale gas extraction than coal seam gas extraction.”