Lotfeeding

Qld groundwater plan set to stifle future feedlot growth

James Nason, 22/05/2017

About half of Australia’s total cattle feedlot capacity can be found in a footprint of inland of Queensland known as the Surat Cumulative Management Area.

The region – highlighted in white below – stretches from Emerald in Central Queensland to St George in the State’s south west and Toowoomba in the east.

Surat CMA map

Surat CMA map 2

Click on maps to enlarge

As a major grain and cattle growing region with access to Great Artesian basin groundwater below, it is easy to see why the area become the epicentre of Australia’s lot feeding industry.

However, what is harder to see is how the region’s economically important feedlot industry can expand much further under a new groundwater allocation plan proposed by the Queensland Government.

The State’s draft Great Artesian Basin and Other Regional Aquifers (GABORA) plan will see most groundwater still available given to coal seam gas or mining projects and very little to agriculture, including future feedlot or other intensive livestock industry development, including cell grazing.

Groundwater is the only secure water available for feedlot development in the region, but rights to that resource now largely lie with gas companies under the State’s Petroleum and Gas Act.

By the numbers

Scrutiny of the draft water plan by the Basin Sustainability Alliance has identified the extent to which the growing groundwater take by the coal seam gas industry, which has grown from a standing start a decade ago to having more than 6000 wells in the Surat CMA today, threatens to stifle future agricultural development in the region.

The CSG industry now draws some 65,000 megalitres (ML) of groundwater to the surface each year in the region, according to the 2016 Surat CMA Underground Water Impact Report.

The grazing and feedlot industries take a combined 54,738 ML of Great Artesian Basin water in the Surat CMA.

It is estimated that, over the next three years, CSG water extraction will grow to an annual take of 110,000 ML per year, before easing back over time to an average annual extraction rate of 70,000 ML per year through to 2060.

The GABORA plan covers the entire area coloured yellow below:

GABORA water plan area

In this total region, the draft plan says 35,055ML of groundwater is unallocated and available for new development.

Of that:

  • 28,610ML or 80pc is State Reserve for major projects (mainly for gas, mining and power stations)
  • 5615ML or 16pc is General Reserve water for agriculture
  • 830ML or 4pc is Indigenous Reserve for Indigenous community projects

In the Surat Cumulative Management Area, the heartland of feedlot activity in Australia, just 840ML is available for future agricultural developments.

The Department of Natural Resources and Mines told Beef Central that the most highly used aquifers in the Surat Basin (the Springbok, Walloon, and Hutton aquifers) have declining pressures and will continue to be impacted by CSG activities, so no unallocated water has been set aside for future agricultural development from those main aquifers.

As a result it is limiting future development for agriculture in the Surat CMA to 840ML from the Precipice Sandstone aquifer, the bottom layer of the Surat Basin.

Were all of that water to be earmarked for future feedlot developments (unlikely, as the 840ML is for all of agriculture), it would allow for total feedlot expansion in the area of only 35,000 head (which compares to existing feedlot capacity in the region of around 600,000 head).

That is based on an industry standard of 24ML per year required for drinking water for 1000 cattle.

24 ML is about the same amount of groundwater that two CSG wells typically draw to the surface each year (they average 12ML/well/year) in order to extract gas from coal seams.

Some feedlots receive treated or untreated groundwater directly from CSG companies under Conduct and Compensation Agreements, Beneficial Use Agreements and Make Good Agreements made on a confidential basis. This “re-use” is a potential source of groundwater for future feedlot developments, but one that can involve complexity and uncertainty, as a newly unfolding legal battle between a feedlot and a CSG company is demonstrating (more in coming days).

DNRM says deeper water may be available, but costs are prohibitive

The draft GABORA plan proposes to make water available for new developments, including feedlots, through a range of mechanisms such as relocation of licenses, entitlements for saved water through privately funded capping and piping programs and unallocated water reserves, the Department of Natural Resources and Mines told Beef Central.

The Department suggested that an additional 845 ML of water could also be available for future feedlot developments from the Clematis Sandstone, a deeper non-Great Artesian Basin aquifer.

However, the Department acknowledged that this aquifer is quite deep in some areas.

The Clematis would in fact require bores to be drilled to depths of some 2000 metres to 3000 metres.

An industry quote received by Beef Central indicates that it could cost well over $1 million and possibly several million to drill and case a bore to that depth.

Drilling and casing bores into the Precipice Sandstone, the bottom layer of the Surat Basin, about 1000 metres deep can be as expensive as $700,000-$800,000, and upwards of $ 1 million.

‘Once you get into depths your costs just blow out’

Pumping costs can also be prohibitive. One driller explained he is currently running a pump to a depth of 350 metres which will cost about $80,000.

“Once you get into depths your costs just blow out,” he said. “Every metre you go deeper it gets more and more difficult, and more and more expensive.”

2016 UWIR Cross Section Figure 3-4 (1)

The Clematis Sandstone is the purple shaded aquifer shown in the lower centre of the above cross section. Click on map to enlarge.

Another Queensland Government report examining the hydrological framework of the GAB does not paint an optimistic picture about the potential of Clematis as a viable source of water for future feedlot developments.

The report notes that the depth of the Clematis makes access to its water restrictive. It further notes that while it is capable of producing small supplies of reliable good quality water, “low yields” are a potential constraint on future water demand and availability.

‘Primary producers have been left with a few crumbs’

In its submission to the draft GABORA plan consultation process, the Basin Sustainability Alliance said the favourable allocation of water to the resources sector, and lack of allocation for agriculture, demonstrates where the Government’s priorities lie.

“The unlimited take of Great Artesian Basin water for the gas industry… is choking agricultural expansion and development of new enterprises,” the BSA submission said.

“The Queensland Government has given CSG producers and miners automatic rights to take unlimited volumes of water, and primary producers have been left with a few crumbs.”

 

 

 

 

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Comments

  1. Max Winders, 23/10/2023

    James, six years later, after the GABORA legislation has been implemented, the small volumes of water so advised in areas suitable for backgrounding and lot feeding has led to the cost of purchasing entitlements going through the roof and impeding expansion of the above during the El Nino years ahead.

    Wambo Feedlot is one such feedlot and, importantly, a custom feedlot offering feedlot space to all industry sectors.

    However, we find that the standing water level in our Huttons water bores has dropped 50 metres since coal seam gas has been extracted from overly deep gas wells which do not isolate the low-value Walloons aquifers from the regionally important Huttons. The reduction in potential yield and the additional cost of pumping hotter water from 50 metres lower has wide ramifications to the cattle industry. The responsible agency, Department of Environment and Science refuses to acknowledge this has occurred and will not undertake formal bore assessments to investigate why this has occurred. The reasons for this need to be formally investigated. Any advice?

  2. Lee Mc Nicholl, 23/05/2017

    G’day Andrew Pedler. Unfortunately you are the “pedler” of BS. If you had done Hydro geology 101 and read both iterations of the Office of Groundwater Impact Assessments {OGIA} Underground Water Impact Reports {UWIR}. You would be aware of the following facts . There are 1646 water bores in the Walloon Coal Measures Aquifer that provide 11,413 Megalitres for Stock & Domestic, Intensive Agriculture, Industrial and Town water supply purposes. These UWIRs repeatedly describe the Walloon Coal Measures as a GAB aquifer as do the hydrologists of all the CSG proponent companies-checkmate eh mate!!
    You sprout more rubbish when you say that most farmers bores don’t exceed 150 metres. That is unadulterated BS.
    For example we have 5 bores in the GAB drawing from between 250-400 meters. You clearly have no idea about the sustainable use of the GAB aquifers and attempt to run rubbish arguments similar to those of Queensland Resources Council”s CEO Mr. Macfarlane which have been public ally dis credited on numerous occasions.
    Lee McNicholl Chair Basin Sustainability Alliance
    .

  3. Andrew Pedler, 23/05/2017

    So many misconceptions and BS (something the cattle industry ought to recognise) in the above article. Needs to be fact checked … Water is not ‘provided’ to the CSG industry at all. CSG has been seeking destinations for water pumped from coal seams, and provides (treated as may be required) water to cattle feedlots. Coal seams are not ‘good’ aquifers. CSG pumps water from coal seams, not sandstones, in order to produce, and particularly avoids pumping water from the Great Artesian Basin aquifers, in fact cases off those aquifers in long tested oil & gas techniques) simply because there is not any gas to be extracted from GAB aquifers and, on a purely commercial basis, if water was to be pumped from the GAB it would be wasted money. Note also that it was the stories from Surat Basin farmers who boasted that they could ‘light their bore’ that attracted the explorers to the region. These farmers are actually CSG producers by their own performance. Most commercial CSG wells do not target seams shallower 380 metres depth, and few farm water bores exceed ~ 150 metres.
    Given that coal is such a poor aquifer compared to sandstone, the producing farmer bores are too shallow to be commercial, but the principle is the same. Pumping water reduces downhole pressure and ‘liberates the gas … a lot like like taking the lid off a bottle of soft drink.
    The policies of government and agencies is more likely influenced by the facts of the technology, not populist fears, or other misconceptions.

  4. Megan Kuhn, 22/05/2017

    No wonder they won’t authorize a Royal Commission on CSG!

  5. Eion John Allister, 22/05/2017

    It would seem to me that past governments of mixed political persuasions have been very much awake and fully aware of the consequences of their decisions concerning the CSG industry and it’s future impacts upon aquifers, the environment and the socio cultural impacts which encompass the future limitation upon agricultural expansion. They have had their eyes wide open and have taken their chosen path openly and deliberately at every turn. They do not admit that their decisions are flawed and are certainly not going to change their course. They are quite comfortable with the environmental vandalism and treachery towards citizens of this state that they have carried out. The well being and benefit of those citizens is what they are supposed to place first and foremost in their public duty and it is becoming increasingly clear that this has not been a guiding principle of their stewardship of the state’s natural resources. They are really unable to be held accountable for their decisions and actions other than through the ballot box and the rules of that game are such that it is really a choice of villians rather than any real difference in values or integrity of policy and action towards the states citizens. Overseas companies have been treated with preference and genuflection by our past and present governments , the deals that have been done have been inept in terms of financial returns to the citizens of the state, whether it is leasing forestry assets, CSG, mineral royalties, cheap power for miners and the prioritisation of infrastructure to support these ventures rather than provide the services that citizens desire and deserve. I share the disgust that Mr Mcnamara has voiced and despair that there will be an improvement or the radical change necessary to make sustainable resource utilisation anything other than a word byte that is trotted out by talking heads when it suits them.

  6. Barry Mcnamara, 22/05/2017

    When will the QLD Govt finally wake up people do not eat coal or sniff gas to live. There will come a day when food will be short and our land will only give limited support to agriculture. The problem is Australia has never been hungry and agriculture is not supported. Mismanagement of our economy demand royalties from mining to get the country back into the black. Govt wake up!

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