Category: Courts and Trials / Company News / Oil and Gas / Environmental Impact / Environment

Linc Energy ordered to hand over insurance documents to farmer

Wednesday, 31 Aug 2016 09:41:51

Liquidators of the failed Linc Energy project must hand over insurance documents to a farmer who is part of a $150 million class action against the company, a Brisbane Supreme Court judge has ruled.

Pamela Bender owns more than 800 hectares of land that adjoins the Darling Downs site where the company ran a trial underground coal gasification (UCG) plant.

Linc was accused of wilfully and unlawfully allowing contaminants to leech into surrounding farmland during the trial.

A report commissioned by the Queensland Government found Linc had caused "widespread" and in some areas "irreversible" damage to arable farmland.

The company was committed to stand trial on five environmental charges but has since been placed in liquidation.

Ms Bender's lawyers said they needed to know the value of the policies to determine if the class action was viable.

Her husband George Bender took his life last year after fighting the gas industry about mining projects on and around his property.

At the time, the Bender family said George had died "from a broken heart" after fighting with some companies over coal seam gas mining on his property.

Their property Valencia is inside a 320-kilometre excavation caution zone set up around the Linc trial site in 2015.

Mrs Bender and her daughter Helen Bender remain outspoken objectors to the coal seam gas and UCG industry.

The Queensland Government banned UCG activity earlier this year.



 

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