FrackNation Page #2

They said, they said the test results

weren't that bad,

but I don't know if the guy

was testing the water,

you know, testing

for the right things.

See, there's some kind of,

they gotta test 'em,

test it a certain way,

I forget how they said it,

but it was, uh...

I don't know how,

I don't know how they do it.

Can I get a sample of your water

to take to Ireland?

Yeah, I'll give you a jug.

I got jugs out in the...

But the water now?

I don't know what

it looks like today.

I mean, she said

it wasn't looking as bad today.

I mean, I got some, you know,

it changes from day to day.

One day it will be clearer,

and the next day it won't.

And Craig Sautner,

who claims his water is muddy brown

because of fracking,

was only able to produce clear water

when asked in front of a camera.

It does change, you know,

from one day to the next.

So how can you trust a well?

You know, all of a sudden

you get, say,

"Well, that looks okay but it does

have a little bit of stuff in there."

Say, well, then

that's fine to use,

and then the next day

it comes out looking like this.

It's not due to the drilling.

There's always been methane

in the water here.

We grew up on the farm,

on the house down here,

and, you know, my grandfather

drilled a well in 1945.

The day he drilled the well,

there was methane in it.

I'll show you where the well is,

that was drilled in '45.

- What's that?

- That is the well.

- And do you still use it?

- The only thing we use it for

is washing the cars

or watering the garden.

Because it is so red with iron.

It has methane too,

but the methane don't hurt you.

It's the iron turns everything red.

So, what's this then?

This is the second well

that we drilled, in the 70s.

- And what's in that well?

- Methane.

Iron.

Sulfur.

We still use it.

No problems.

But the moratorium

was not going to be the only problem

for the people of Dimock.

Now they were going to be

served with a massive bill

for a pipeline that was

supposed to solve a problem

that they knew did not exist.

The Pennsylvania infrastructure

investment Authority

voted Tuesday

on a controversial project.

They decided to give $12 million

to build a water pipeline

between Montrose and Dimock.

It was a fiat, it was simply,

"This is what we are going to do".

We reacted in anger.

We were citizens of this community,

and you don't expect to have

$12 million of the state's money

committed to a project that

may or may not make any sense,

that hasn't been researched,

that alternatives haven't

been considered for.

So we all got together and formed

a group called "Enough Already"

because we had

had enough already.

It was just a group of

people that got together

and said, "Look, this is ridiculous."

We've had enough. Enough already.

After we had a couple

of meetings,

we decided to get a petition around

and have everybody sign it.

We had over 1,500 signatures.

The water line issue has split this

tiny rural Susquehanna County town,

and quite literally.

- ...you!

- We had to do something.

We just didn't like being

trashed all the time.

Dimock is not a wasteland,

it's not a gasland.

It's not a ghost town.

We're tired of getting

on the internet

and reading blogs where

people are just lying, saying,

"I drove into Dimock

and I immediately got sick

from breathing the air."

We have been the victims

of a continual deluge

of completely inaccurate reporting

about the condition of

the water in this community.

It seemed the voices

of the ordinary people in Dimock

who were saying their water was fine

weren't being heard.

It wasn't hard to see why.

Josh Fox was getting huge support

from Hollywood celebrities.

Some even came to Dimock.

Dimock, we made it,

we're here, we come in love.

People are fractured.

We're all fractured over this.

The locals

didn't stand a chance.

There's a common

misconception out there

that the Dimock community

is fighting the gas company.

The Dimock community loves Cabot.

There's 11 litigants and a few other

stray oddballs here and there

that are fighting them.

The rest of us, we want drilling

to proceed as normal,

and beef up our economy,

and create jobs.

It's our right

to make our voices known.

And apparently we did.

- The water line got stopped.

- The water line got stopped.

It was a big win

for this grassroots organization.

But their fight wasn't over.

The moratorium was still in place and

the Sautners and ten other families

were still suing the gas company.

As for the rest of

the citizens of Dimock,

well, their lives were on hold.

Was this justified?

I'm Bryan Swistock.

I'm a water resources specialist

here at Penn State

in the School of Forest Resources.

I work for a cooperative extension,

do education, outreach

and applied research projects.

Specifically, in this case,

we were doing a research project

looking at the potential impacts

of Marcellus shale

on private drinking water supplies.

In summary, our study really

did not see any clear changes

in water quality

due to hydraulic fracturing.

We didn't see any increases

in methane in water

as a result of the process.

What about the flaming faucets?

Sure. Yeah, there can

be many natural sources of methane,

and it's not really anything new.

You can have methane in water

for a variety of reasons.

It can be what's called

biogenic methane,

which is naturally occurring,

just due to natural decomposition.

Maybe you're located

next to a stream

where there's been a lot of organic

matter decomposing over time.

We had some people that told stories

of lighting their faucets on fire

for years now, well before

any of this drilling started.

A flaming fountain,

the most unusual

artesian well in the country.

Forty years ago, a well was dug

in the front of the courthouse

at Colfax, Louisiana.

At 600 feet, they struck natural gas.

And at 1,100 feet, salt water.

More or less discouraged over

the matter of a drinking fountain

for the courthouse square,

they fixed up a small bathing pool

for children at the base

of the fountain,

and touched off the escaping gas.

The result, especially at night,

is a fiery fountain of strange beauty

that has burned on and on

almost half a century.

There are even towns

across America called Burning Springs.

That's how much gas is out there.

And George Washington

and Thomas Paine

lit the water on the Millstone River

in New Jersey

on December 15th, 1798,

150 years before fracking

even started.

So, what is fracking?

Fracking is a very efficient way

of getting oil and natural gas

out of the ground.

Activists make it seem like

fracking is something very new

that we know little about.

It's not.

It's been around since 1947

when the first frack well

was drilled in Kansas.

And this is what it looks like.

A pipe is drilled into the

earth more than a mile down,

about the length of 200 school buses

parked end to end.

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