The Santos Gladstone LNG gas field development expansion expands across almost one million hectares of land, from Roma east to Taroom and Wandoan, and north towards Rolleston.

The community group has lodged a case in the Federal Court of Australia under the national environmental law, arguing that the minister's approval was unlawful because he ignored plans by Santos to discharge "large volumes "of CSG waste water into the Dawson River.

Western Downs Alliance will be represented by public interest environmental lawyers EDO NSW.

"The Santos plan for 6100 new CSG wells in Queensland is a recipe for disaster for the Great Artesian Basin and for landholders who depend on it," WDA spokesperson Sarah Moles said.

"The Environmental Impact Statement for the project predicts that it will impact on 73 water bores used by landholders in the area, and will extract 219 billion litres of water over the life of the project and produce 22 billion litres of salty brine as waste.

"Our water resources, and particularly the nationally significant Great Artesian Basin, are far too important to be put at risk for a short-term industry like CSG."

She said Hunt's decision was unlawful, and said he ignored the impact that the release of large volumes of waste water into the Dawson River would have.

"The people of Queensland are sick and tired of CSG companies riding roughshod over farmers and communities, and putting long-term water supplies and food production under threat," she said.

"We're determined to test whether this approval was given lawfully, and to act in the interests of landholders and water resources in our region."

Hunt has been asked to provide all of the documents that he relied upon to make his decision to approve the project.

The WDA says the Independent Expert Scientific Committee advised that there is considerable scientific uncertainty about potential impacts on surface and groundwater from the project, including reducing water supply to important springs of the Great Artesian Basin and making changes to groundwater and surface water quality, and the cumulative impacts on groundwater pressures.

Hunt's approvals required Santos to undertake detailed groundwater monitoring that would flag changes in water pressure and the impact on groundwater dependent ecosystems.

It is not allowed to take water if the springs' levels drop by 20 centimetres

Santos' wastewater disposal options also include beneficial reuse, reinjection, irrigation and disposal in a licenced facility, and in its submission to the government disposal of process water into the river was not mentioned.

Infuriated

The move has infuriated the Queensland Resource Council, which has been waging a war against "green activist tactics used to disrupt and delay coal projects", and now says they are deploying "lawfare" against the gas sector, showing that "no commodity is safe from the anti-resources activists".

The group says the strategy is from the activists' strategy handbook Stopping the Coal Export Boom, which details tactics, such as litigation, to disrupt and delay resources projects.

The strategy reads: "Legal challenges can stop projects outright, or can delay them in order to buy time to build a much stronger movement and powerful public campaigns. The can also expose the impacts, increase costs, raise investor uncertainty", the QRC said.

Last year, Origin Energy managing director Grant King said during a speech that if the tactics deployed against coal projects had also been used against the gas sector we would have been unlikely to have seen the creation of an entirely new LNG export industry.

"Many of those opportunities will be in Queensland and whether they're in Queensland or elsewhere in Australia, ought be developed for the benefit of the world," King said.

"It was extraordinary we achieved approval for APLNG in 18 months to two years, but I would hate to be doing it today. We do need to make sure that there's a balance in those approval processes between the legitimate concerns of communities and stakeholders in the development of these projects and the claims that might be more ideologically based because if we don't do that, we will not give the world the benefit of the great resources that we have in Australia and that we have in Queensland."

The QRC said that all resource projects go through world-class rigorous environmental approvals by scientists not green activists, so "it is ludicrous that these taxpayer-funded groups can challenge years of scientific research and subsequent approvals that have passed scrutiny of state and federal governments".

It has called for the Federal Court to ensure the Western Downs Alliance to meet costs if and when awarded against them.

Green activists have lodged two appeals against the massive Adani coal mine in the past couple of weeks.

That project now has four appeals pending, and one pending decision, all lodged by taxpayer funded green activists.

The Adani project has been wading through approval and court appeals for 68 months, while GVK Hancock is in its 93rd month, having formally entered the process in September 2008.

The QRC wants the Queensland government to "urgently" overhaul the process that enables green activists to disrupt and delay projects.

"Governments both state and federal should be doing all they can to prevent the blatant abuse of the court systems to the detriment of Queensland jobs," the QRC said in a statement.