Today, Stuff reported:
Clearly the Prime Ministers belief that fracking has been conducted "safely" in Taranaki for the last 30 years is wrong! There's been numerous instances of fracking accidents that have contaminated the soil and peoples water supplies in the area, and here's a few official reports that show Key up for the liar he is:
Table 3 on page 15 of this Drilling Waste Disposal Monitoring Programmes report (PDF) shows the amount of non-compliance for the Inglewood land farm. As well as ground water contamination, the operators spread their fracking sludge that contains many toxins directly onto the land.
Amongst these toxic substances, Hydrocarbons were tested for and shown to be six times over the limit or 26,742 mg/kg above the 4558 mg/kg limit outlined in the consent. There was no fine, the only response was to reduce the consent requirements and the amount of testing being conducted.
There is also the Shell Todd Oil Kapuni study (PDF) and the Cheal Petroleum study (which the Taranaki regional council has removed from their website), both showing water contamination above the already lenient consent limits.
These instances of unsafe practices have been publicly reported on and even raised in Parliament by Green MP Gareth Hughes... In my opinion, a competent Prime Minister should have been aware of those tabled documents.
If he was unaware, he's therefore incompetent. If he was aware (which is likely the case), he's attempting to mislead to public about the highly dangerous and environmentally damaging practice of fracking. Either way, dishonest John has no place being the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Prime Minister John Key has waded into the fracking debate, accusing its opponents of talking nonsense.
At a Taranaki energy site, he said he had had enough of the scaremongering over the practice, particularly from the Green Party.
"From what they're saying, you'd think that because of fracking we'll all go to hell in a handbasket," he said.
"But the truth of the matter is that the practice has been going safely on in Taranaki for the past 30 years without any issues. And last year the parliamentary commissioner for the environment gave it a tick of approval in a preliminary report on fracking, and I expect that nothing will change in her final report when it is issued later this year."
Clearly the Prime Ministers belief that fracking has been conducted "safely" in Taranaki for the last 30 years is wrong! There's been numerous instances of fracking accidents that have contaminated the soil and peoples water supplies in the area, and here's a few official reports that show Key up for the liar he is:
Table 3 on page 15 of this Drilling Waste Disposal Monitoring Programmes report (PDF) shows the amount of non-compliance for the Inglewood land farm. As well as ground water contamination, the operators spread their fracking sludge that contains many toxins directly onto the land.
Amongst these toxic substances, Hydrocarbons were tested for and shown to be six times over the limit or 26,742 mg/kg above the 4558 mg/kg limit outlined in the consent. There was no fine, the only response was to reduce the consent requirements and the amount of testing being conducted.
There is also the Shell Todd Oil Kapuni study (PDF) and the Cheal Petroleum study (which the Taranaki regional council has removed from their website), both showing water contamination above the already lenient consent limits.
These instances of unsafe practices have been publicly reported on and even raised in Parliament by Green MP Gareth Hughes... In my opinion, a competent Prime Minister should have been aware of those tabled documents.
If he was unaware, he's therefore incompetent. If he was aware (which is likely the case), he's attempting to mislead to public about the highly dangerous and environmentally damaging practice of fracking. Either way, dishonest John has no place being the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
