I just viewed the excellent (and scary!) “Gasland” from HBO’s Documentary Films (in some collaboration with Sundance). For those of you wondering just what went on with all of those secret meetings with Vice President Dick Cheney leading the largest U.S. energy producers, the results are a ticking time bomb the likes of which have never been foisted on the American public before.
There simply isn’t enough outrage (after seeing this film) to contain the anger one feels after viewing this film. Cheney and his Halliburton and energy company buds literally have sold huge portions of the “lower 48” down the river while enabling the relatively cheap exploitation of natural gas reserves at the expense of totally compromising water supplies. And they did all this while cleverly writing into the ironically named “Clean Water Act of 2005” an exemption of the very technique that produces polluted ground water into the act! The Republican-controlled Congress dutifully passed it into law and apparently no whistleblowers were anywhere in the neighborhood that raised any concerns that were seriously addressed at the time.
Only when Josh Fox undertakes his own modest investigation into the growing chorus of horror stories coming out of regions where “hydraulic fracturing” exploration has been taking place and finds not only ground water supplies which have been criminally polluted (a “cocktail” of some 560-plus chemicals is used in the process) to the point that small farmers and residents in areas where “fracking” has been used to develop natural gas wells should not be drinking their previously fine water—let alone be using it for livestock and/or agricultural purposes. Fox further details that drilling one of these gas wells involves some 1000-plus trips of large-haul semis, hauling the equipment, the chemicals, gravel, sand and water required. When the well is completed, the process leaves behind a toxic pond of “production water” so toxic that they fly used-car log streamers over the pond to ward off wildlife.
SEE THIS IMPORTANT FILM now on HBO (or rent it when it hit Netflix). If you live in one of the areas shown in the map that sprawls through the entire lower 48 states, be aware that “fracking” will be coming to an area near you. And be afraid. Very afraid.
(See the IMDB entry and comments for "Gasland" here.)
