Interesting story on ABC New England North West on problems associated with fly in, fly out workers in Narrabri. The town is welcoming them, but is struggling to work out how best to cope. Among other things, the airport has gone from from 13 to 52 flights a week!
You can find more details here.
4 comments:
Jim - good to see you back to blogging.
Re FIFO and Narrabri: I take it this is coal seam gas mining (CSGM), or rather, prospecting for such. I myself have not yet adopted a concluded position on CSGM. Part of me says "yes", part says "no". Seeing the Greens are opposed, however, I do lean in the "pro" direction.
Perhaps you can can blog on this at some stage?
Best,
Michael O'Rourke
I think it is a combination of open cut coal mining and coal seam gas.
I think the Michael is correct in part about the CSG discussion/argument. CSG exporation is virtually harmless, production is the most likely to cause damage but it is on a site by site basis, i.e. if there is an environmental problem it is local, rather than regional as claimed by many in the (big) no-CSG camp. Also there is an ENORMOUS amount of miss-information (mostly mistakes about shale-gas which is not produced here) and sometimes lies, surprisingly this is mostly on the local government and protestor side.
It is interesting to note that there is discussions around local government engineering organisations of the possibility of FIFO for engineers from overseas to local councils, especially rural councils! This is because of the inadequate number of engineers in Australia generally.
Hi Michael. Glad that I was missed! Rod is right about the combination. I'm not sure that he is right on the regional issue so far as the Liverpool Plains is concerned because of the interconnected nature of ground water in the area.
Hi Jim,
My familiarity is with the Clarence-Morton Basin (though I have done some work in the Gunnedah Basin in the past). However, you are right in pointing out that I may be incorrect with the Liverpool Plains... I just don't have adequate knowledge of the area.
Having said that, I know that many opponents don't adequate knowledge either (as evidenced by what was said at the 7000 person rally in Lismore last week and local governments turning this into a local populist political issue). The development of a populist approach has destroyed almost vestiges of science that remain!
But, I'll stop blathering as I have digressed from the point on your blog post. sorry!
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