Dear President Obama Page #2

are causing many residents

to reconsider the long held

pro-drilling mentality

that once reigned

in the Keystone State.

I don't see any...

problem with drilling.

I mean, I think, I think

probably

when they started drilling

a number of years ago,

they were not doing it well

and the wells weren't cast

in a great way

and the chemicals

that were going down the wells

probably weren't healthy, and..

I mean, I'm sure

that there were some..

...there were some issues back,

years and years ago but..

...but today, drilling today

and how they do it

I think they're doing it

very responsible.

[instrumental music]

When the first hydraulic

fracturing operators

came to Pennsylvania

in the mid 2000's

they didn't take out billboards

to announce the new process.

Secrecy is one of

the industry's primary tools.

That secrecy is understandable.

Fracking involves blasting

millions of gallons

of fresh water

mixed with a toxic slurry

of chemicals and sand

to blow apart the shale

and extract the gas

trapped inside.

Every frack is like a bomb

a mile or two

beneath the surface.

The process gives operators

a new, more invasive

level of efficiency

allowing them to drill

horizontally for miles

in all directions

from a single wellhead.

Though fracking has existed

for 60 years

this new high-tech process

high volume

hydraulic fracturing

was unlike any kind of

drilling done before.

It's like comparing

the Wright Brothers' plane

to an F-15.

Mid-size companies

based in Texas and Oklahoma

with names like Cabot,

Chesapeake, and Noble

became the state's

fastest growing employers.

The result..

...close to 10,000 new gas

wells drilled across the state

in just a few years.

It snuck up on us.

Uh, and, uh, we weren't

really paying attention.

This came on...

in the last ten years, uh..

...very, very quickly.

And it took a good long time

for the citizens

who were gonna have to

live with that fracking

to catch up with it.

Pennsylvania

is a perfect example of..

They were really stampeded.

[indistinct chattering]

(Matt)

Bradford and Susquehanna County

had the-the two best

air qualities

in the State of Pennsylvania

before this started.

Now, Bradford County

and Susquehanna County

has got the two worst

quality of air

in the whole

State of Pennsylvania.

We're a rural farmland area

we don't have any

heavy industry up here.

We don't have

any big factories.

There's..

It's just all countryside.

They're all around us really.

We have quite a few within a

two or three mile radius of us

about nine or ten of 'em,

I think.

A year after

we moved into here..

...uh, one day all of a sudden

our water turned all gray

and our neighbor's water

turned all gray

and our well filled with methane

and...it turned black and..

...our well was actually

erupting like a geyser

'cause there was

so much methane in it.

And our levels it went from

38.9 milligrams per liter

which.. The saturation point

of water is 25 or 28--

Twenty eight.

Twenty eight milligrams per

liter, so anything beyond that

water can't hold it anymore

and it escapes.

So, our second test, our levels

had went up to 58.9. So..

- No, 58.4.

- 58.4?

It's a good thing you're good

with all those numbers 'cause..

It's all in here.

We haven't had any water

for six years.

We live out of a buffalo,

as they call it.

We-we go every week

for our own water.

Take care of that ourselves.

Even though we weren't

the ones that ruined the water

we're the ones

taking care of it.

Pennsylvania feels

it's our responsibility now.

Not Cabot's anymore.

I mean,

this place is spoiled now.

I can't leave it.. Am I gonna

leave it to my kids? For what?

So they can keep hauling water

the rest of their lives?

The government can have it back.

They want it so God damn bad.

That's what it seems

like to me.

You know, here you are,

using water as the club

to smash apart the bedrock

to get oil or gas out of it.

On its journey down

to the shale and back up again

it's picked up a lot of

naturally occurring

toxic chemicals

that are trapped in the shale.

And these can be heavy metals

these can be

radioactive substances

and these can be

other hydrocarbons

things like benzene

which we know with certainty

is a, is a, uh,

is a carcinogen.

So, all of these,

um, toxic chemicals

that had been

safely trapped in the shale

a mile or more below our feet

where they're not

gonna hurt anybody

are now exhumed

and brought to the surface.

Now, you ask about test results

and chemicals,

and everything else..

Well, sonny, here you go.

'You know, three grades of

uranium in my water.'

'Three grades of thorium,

strontium, manganese, arsenic..'

The list just goes

on and on and on.

(Ray)

We're idiots, we're liars,

we're just trying to get money

out of the industry

and nothing else..

All I want is my water back.

18,000 gas well pads

the size of, each one of them

for a horizontal drilling,

so huge, five acre pads.

And all the interconnecting

pipelines and roads

and, uh, truck trips,

you're talking about

more than several thousand

truck trips per well.

We don't have 18,000

of anything over here.

[chuckling]

You know, we don't have

18,000 driveways.

(Rebecca)

This is rural America,

it's country

and because of sparse population

we're a marginalized

sub-population

and our lives are not valued

as much as, um

people living in dense areas,

like a city.

We're disposable,

my life is disposable.

And that's really

difficult to fight.

Um, because you can't

go back and change..

..to change the regulations,

the frack regulations..

You need legislators,

and for this county

it basically a done deal.

Natural gas has me very

optimistic about the future.

optimistic about the future.

Natural gas has much less CO2

than coal or oil

and costs less too.

Using natural gas to support

more renewable energy.

Make sense for the climate.

With the gas industries

in the area

the sky is the limit.

(male announcer)

'Pennsylvania's natural gas'

'ready to fuel our future,

today and tomorrow.'

It sounded so good and

particularly with natural gas

because, uh, everyone wanted

to do something about,

uh, climate change.

People are trying to figure out

how they're gonna get

enough carbon

out of the atmosphere

to make, to make

the United States work

and to keep the economy going.

And the idea was

burning natural gas

produces lower CO2 emission

than burning coal.

This notion of a bridge

that we'd have to continue

to use natural gas as

a supposedly cleaner fossil fuel

to get us to the green

renewable future

is a ludicrous analogy.

As a civil engineer,

believe me, I know bridges.

Usually, a bridge is built

from a place where you are

to a place where you wanna get,

so you don't fall into

a place you don't wanna be.

So a place you don't want to be,

is using fossil fuels.

So the notion is you build

a bridge out of a fossil fuel

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