At first glance, the proposal from Cornerstone Gas seems harmless enough: drill a few test holes in Campbell River’s coal seams, check for commercial supplies of methane, pump it out and compress it, then add some local energy to Vancouver Island’s natural gas pipeline.

Since April, as prelude to this project, Cornerstone has been quietly meeting with local First Nations, municipalities and environmental groups to introduce its project. According to its June 25th press release, Cornerstone — affiliated with Quinsam Coal and its parent company, Hillsborough Resources — has announced that its proposal has met with enough “positive feedback [that] the partners are now moving to apply for formal tenure and the necessary permits to allow drilling at the five pre-determined test sites.”

The “positive feedback” claimed by Cornerstone could be more accurately described as “inadequate answers”, according to the Campbell River and Courtenay citizens who met to compare notes and express concern. The result is a new organization called the Citizens Concerned About Coalbed Methane (CCCBM), one of many such groups that have arisen in the wake of proposals for methane extraction in BC. Telkwa, Smithers, Hat Creek and Merritt are just a few communities that have stalled coalbed methane projects because of feared environmental damage. Said one representative at the June 27th meeting in Campbell River, “We asked them to come with answers and they didn’t.”

When notes are compared, Cornerstone’s communication strategy now seems transparently obvious: meet with individual groups without being too explicit about the details of methane extraction, bring First Nations on side with promised benefits, paint an incomplete picture of a responsible industry engaged in a harmless enterprise, and then claim to the provincial government that the appropriate consultation has taken place. The real coalbed methane picture is far more complex and alarming.

Unlike natural gas, methane is not under pressure so it isn’t forced to the surface in huge volumes through an occasional bore hole. Instead, it is trapped in coal seams by water. To extract the methane, the water must first be removed. Each well consists of two lines: one that carries the escaping methane to the surface for compression, the other that evacuates the water. “De-watering” is an essential step in making methane wells operational, a process that can take from months to years of pumping, or may continue indefinitely.

Huge quantities of water, often containing high concentrations of various salts, have to go somewhere. In many American states, this water has been dumped on the surface, contaminating streams, polluting landscapes, creating salt beds, ruining soil, poisoning livestock and generally causing environmental havoc. Domestic and agricultural wells can go dry, methane can seep into existing healthy wells, tap water can even ignite. (Methane can spread underground through a fracturing process called “fraccing” that cracks the seams to allow more methane to release for collection. The fraccing material can even be toxic.) The BC government, which encourages methane exploration, has decided that the evacuated water must be returned to sub surface levels.

But no one knows what lies below the areas to be drilled. What aquifers must be drained to retrieve the methane and what influence could this have on water tables? How dependent are local streams and lakes on this underground water? Could the drill holes — about 400 metres — cause valuable aquifers to drain to lower unusable levels? How will the pumped water be stored before it is returned below the surface? What will be the subterranean effects of moving this water from place to place? Could contaminated water flow to clean water sources or could it re-surface somewhere else? Without precise geological knowledge, Cornerstone’s drilling is a sub-surface crap-shoot that could cause any number of environmental problems.

The number of holes must also be considered. Cornerstone’s five test holes, scheduled for drilling this autumn, could become the first of about 600 intended wells to punctuate the landscape between the Campbell River airport and the Quinsam Coal site. “Creeping production under the guise of exploration,” as one critic called the process. And each well, in addition to de-watering facilities and a clearing of perhaps 4 to 5 acres, needs pumps, electricity, an access road for maintenance, and a network of pipelines that will eventually connect to a compressor and access to Vancouver Island’s natural gas line. The result will be a sprawling industrial site that will affect water, fragment forests, disturb wildlife and threaten the tranquillity of everything and everyone in the vicinity. Noise will be an issue. Compressors run at about 50 decibels, at 100 metres the equivalent of being in a room with a washing machine.

Then there’s the methane itself. It’s a fossil fuel; although cleaner burning than coal and oil, it still contributes to global warming. Methane that comes to the surface during de-watering is usually “flared” (burned) in the open air, causing a range of pollutants. Sometimes this unwanted methane is simply “vented”, just released into the atmosphere. Any methane that escapes during venting, or reaches the surface from inadvertent strata disturbance, has about 25 times the climate warming effect of equal amounts of carbon dioxide.

And, for the risk and environmental damage, the local community gets almost no jobs. Nor will it get an environmental assessment — a lawyer from West Coast Environmental Law says this provincial safeguard is not triggered by coalbed methane projects. But the community will get more experience with Hillsborough Resources, Quinsam Coal and its ilk, all packaged with a brand of corporate ethic that excuses the flagrant poisoning of the Quinsam watershed with leaching from its mine site. Cornerstone Gas and coalbed methane have all the markings of trouble.