The government plans to modify the State Environmental Planning Policy in a way that could allow AGL to carry out hydraulic fracturing – known as fracking – close to homes in Gloucester, without completing a full environmental impact study.

With CSG exploration approved for much of the Hunter, Maitland Greens candidate John Brown said residents should be on notice. 

“As far as I’m concerned this is the thin edge of the wedge,” Mr Brown said. 

“Don’t kid yourself it won’t come to Maitland anytime soon.” 

According to government mapping, more than a dozen wells drilled for exploring in the Hunter Valley had been plugged (cemented) and abandoned or were not producing gas.

The closest to Maitland is a site between Black Hill and the Hexham Swamp that was drilled in 1992, but plugged and abandoned. 

Under existing rules, because the proposed wells are within three kilometres of an existing one, they are deemed a state-significant development requiring an environmental impact study. 

The rule change, however, will measure the three kilometres from the geometric centre of the new wells, not from the nearest one.

“The absurdity, if this goes ahead, is that you could design a set of wells in such a way that some of the wells you propose to frack could be within just a few metres of existing wells,” Groundswell Gloucester spokesman John Watts said. 

“It is the closeness of the wells that could cause a problem, not the closeness to the centre point.”

A spokesman for Planning Minister Pru Goward said the government considered the amendment to be minor.

“The amendment creates certainty for industry and the community by removing ambiguous wording in the policy,” he said.

“The Office of Coal Seam Gas has to still carry out an environmental assessment under Part 5 of the [Environmental Planning and Assessment] Act in connection with the wells.”

An AGL spokeswoman said the company was reviewing the potential effect of the amendment.

“The Gloucester gas project has the potential to supply more than 15 per cent of the state’s gas needs by 2018,” she said. 

Mr Watts said the group and the Environment Defender’s Offices had been writing to the government since November to point out the proposed wells would breach the three-kilometre range, thereby changing the status of the pilot to a state-significant development that would require an EIS.

The groups had not received a reply before the proposed amendment was advertised for comment last week.