FrackNation

The shale deposits that lie

beneath 34 states

harbor large reserves of natural gas.

Energy companies are digging

wells across the country

in hoping to revolutionize

our energy consumption.

There's also growing concern over

one way they drill for natural gas.

It's something called "fracking."

The high-pressure pumping

of water and chemicals

deep into the earth

to release oil and gas.

It's been implicated

with water contamination,

air pollution, health effects...

Now the debate has a new concern.

The process may trigger earthquakes.

You put a match to your water

and it went up in flames?

We are in Copenhagen for the United

Nations Climate Change Conference.

My name is Phelim McAleer.

I'm an investigative journalist

and I love it.

If you don't shut that off

I'm gonna take it away from you.

Asking the powerful

difficult questions is a great job.

Mr. Gore, will you

correct the record?

I wouldn't do anything else.

I was a reporter in Northern Ireland

during the Troubles,

and later worked for

the UK Sunday Times,

and then The Financial Times

and The Economist.

Fracking is a huge story

because most people believed we

were running out of fossil fuels.

But it turns out most people

were wrong.

We came up with a way to tap

previously inaccessible oil

and gas from shale rock.

In terms of a newfound source

of energy for the globe,

this discovery that gas shales

can be productive

is probably one of the most

important step increases

in the amount of energy

available to the world

that's happened

in a long, long time.

It's just absolutely huge.

The combination

of horizontal drilling

and hydraulic fracturing

has allowed the world now finally

to unlock huge quantities

of hydrocarbons

and provide cheap,

abundant, reliable energy

to not just millions of people, but

potentially to billions of people.

But despite all this good news,

fracking is controversial,

mostly because of this man.

Josh Fox is a journalist

and filmmaker.

According to Gasland, his

Oscar-nominated documentary,

which also won an Emmy,

fracking is a complete disaster.

It's polluting water and causing

serious illnesses and deaths.

And, in the most famous scene

in Gasland,

people's tap water

bursts into flames.

Whoa! Jesus Christ!

Because of these claims,

fracking has been banned in many places,

from Pennsylvania and New York

to France and Bulgaria.

But it took me only five minutes

on the internet

to discover this claim of flammable

water was very questionable.

I went to a screening of

Gasland in Chicago

to ask Josh Fox about it.

Excuse me, this is...

Not relevant? Josh Fox,

the director of Gasland,

knew that one of the most

dramatic scenes in his documentary

probably had nothing to do

with fracking,

but decided not to tell his audience.

So I put the exchange on YouTube.

But before you could say

"flaming faucets,"

Josh Fox got his lawyers

to force YouTube to take it down.

I put it on another website,

but using a bogus copyright claim,

he shut me down again.

This was censorship.

What was Josh Fox afraid of?

What was he trying to hide?

I needed to investigate.

I decided to ask the public

to help me make a film

that would tell the true story

about fracking.

I went on the crowdfunding

website Kickstarter.

Folks with big ideas

but not a lot of money

connect with people

willing to fund them

for everything from documentary films

to new technology.

Here's how it works:

Creators post a video,

pitching an idea,

and ask for donations.

Anyone who likes it can give as much

money or as little as they want.

This is a film about people

and it will be funded by people.

It'll be funded by small donations

from you and people like you

who care about the truth.

The response was amazing.

People from all over the world

were sending in $5.00,

$10.00, $20.00.

In the end, well over

3,000 people chipped in.

Clearly, the truth about fracking

is something they wanted

but weren't getting.

I went straight to the place

that has been painted

as the ultimate environmental

wasteland caused by fracking.

In tiny Dimock, Pennsylvania,

there is trouble just below the surface.

Methane in some of the water wells,

enough for ignition at the tap,

made famous by a scene from

the documentary Gasland...

As I drove around,

I could see no wasteland.

I did see beautiful farmland

with rolling hills.

Were people here

as unhappy about fracking

as the media and Josh Fox claimed?

There was the guy that knocked at

the door, knocked on Esther's door.

Well, one day,

a land man knocked at our door.

A station wagon came down

the driveway that I didn't recognize,

and a gentleman came out

and presented us

with a proposed lease

for the property.

My grandfather has leased

when other companies have

come along in the past

so we just thought, Grandpa

would have done it, why can't we?

More than a dozen families

in Dimock, Pennsylvania

have water that looks like this.

The water came out looking

like coffee with milk in it.

Sautner says their water supply

became contaminated

when Cabot Oil Company

started drilling

and something got

into their well water.

Our son broke out

in open sores down his legs

from using the water here.

Our daughter had big sores of...

eczema? Is that what it's called?

We shouldn't have to live

like this. We're Americans.

We knew we had iron, manganese,

magnesium, aluminum,

chloride, sodium, strontium,

barium, three different

types of uranium,

two of them are weapons-grade.

And a host of other chemicals,

some I can't even pronounce

the names of them.

The state agency ordered Cabot

to stop drilling new wells,

and to deliver fresh water

to affected residents.

The Pennsylvania Department

of Environmental Protection

introduced a moratorium, a ban,

until they could study

the situation.

This meant no drilling by Cabot

in a nine-mile box around Dimock.

So it just put a kibosh

on everything.

We were 13 days out

from having a permit

where they actually could

come in and start drilling,

and all of a sudden

they couldn't do anything.

But Cabot, they put methane

in the water.

They polluted the water.

- No.

- Allegedly.

Yeah.

The next residence here

is Craig and Julie Sautner,

who have all kinds of claims of all

kinds of chemical contamination,

weapons-grade uranium, etc., etc.

In their well.

But they've never shown

any lab data to verify it.

They just claim it.

Meanwhile, every well around them

is active and online.

I began to suspect that Craig

Sautner's claims about contaminants,

including weapons-grade

uranium in his water,

were greatly exaggerated,

or maybe even false.

Have you done

independent testing yourself?

We did, way back, you know,

maybe two years ago.

Two years ago

we did some testing.

But that, you know, I don't think

we've done any testing since that.

- Independent, you know.

- And what did that show?

I can't remember what that showed.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes