Money to clean up disaster
Department to chase Linc directors over Hopeland
THE Department of Environment and Heritage Protection has received millions of dollars in this year’s Queensland Budget to rehabilitate the Linc Energy mine site, called the “worst pollution event in Queensland’s history”.
Money will also go towards prosecuting those allegedly responsible for the Darling Downs environmental disaster.
The department alleges Linc Energy’s underground coal gasification mining caused “widespread, of high impact and, in part, irreversible” damage to prime agricultural land in and around the Hopeland area.
It alleges the company allowed methane, hydrogen, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide to leak from its underground coal gasification site near Chinchilla from 2007 to 2013.
A spokesman for the department said it would allocate $20.9 million for future rehabilitation work on the Linc site, comprising $9.7 million for 2017-18 and $3.7 million each year for 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2020-21.
In 2016-17, $3.9 million was allocated to site rehabilitation.
The department will also allocate $4 million in 2017-18 for legal actions relating to the former Linc Energy, including the ongoing prosecution of Linc and a number of its former directors for alleged serious environmental harm.
“In addition, EHP is also funding other court action designed to minimise exposure to taxpayers, including by defending an appeal by former CEO Peter Bond against an environmental protection order issued to him under the chain of responsibility powers, and another important case (now under appeal) concerning compliance by Linc’s liquidators with a separate environmental protection order.”
In 2016-17, $5.8 million was spent on legal matters relating to the former Linc Energy.
“As part of its role as the state’s environmental regulator, it is vital that EHP holds resource operators to account in matters such as these,” the department’s spokesman said.
The department is continuing to test and monitor soil gas contaminants in the Hopeland and surrounding region as part of an extensive ongoing investigation.