Gasland Part II Page #2

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of a poor Italian immigrant family from New York City--

on 19.5 acres, just a mile

from the Delaware,

home was in the right place,

one of those place

that maybe you might say,

"Nothing ever happens."

But then, in 2008,

just like most people

in the Upper Delaware,

we got a letter in the mail.

We learned that our land was

on top of a formation

called the Marcellus Shale,

and that the Marcellus Shale

was the "Saudi Arabia"

of natural gas.

We could lease our land

to the natural gas companies.

We would receive a signing bonus

in the neighborhood of $100,000

and untold thousands more

if we only let them...

well...

for the first time,

we heard that word.

You know the word.

It's just like it sounds.

If we only let them "frack us."

Fracking.

Fracking.

Fracking.

Fracking them.

The hydraulic

fracturing, or "fracking"--

fracking--

fracking.

So-called fracking--

fracking--

Fracking--fracking.

The Marcellus.

MAN:
Shale gas.

The shale.

[Male newscaster speaks German]

...das Marcellus Shale.

[Speaks German]

...fracking.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
The "F" word

isn't in the dark anymore.

It's an outright hit.

"Fracking" was Number 3 on

the list of most popular words

in the English language in 2011,

right behind "occupy"

and "deficit."

And with one to two million

new wells projected,

America is in a fracking frenzy.

Hydraulic fracturing,

or "fracking," is a method of gas extraction

drilling deep down thousands

of feet to a shale formation

and then forcing down the well

millions of gallons of water

laced with toxic chemicals

at such intense pressures

that it created fractures

in the rock and freed up the gas.

But you never just drill

one well in a shale play,

you drill thousands,

creating an industrial

redefinition of the landscape.

Millions of gallons

of water per well,

thousands upon thousands

of truck trips,

thousands of tons

of proprietary chemicals

injected into the ground.

And because fracking

explicitly is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act,

the industry doesn't have

to tell the public what chemicals they're using.

The bigger picture still is

that we were just in the corner

of the largest domestic

natural gas drilling campaign

in history, now occupying

34 states.

The gas drilling

and fracking industry

was knocking on

the doors of millions.

And with thousands of cases

of water contamination,

air pollution,

and health problems

reported across the U.S.,

it's not just the numbers

that get you dizzy.

There was only one problem.

The gas industry

denied everything.

To date, we have found

no verified instance

of hydraulic fracturing

harming groundwater.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
The war for who

was going to tell this story

was on.

WOMAN, ON PHONE:

We had good water.

The people in Dimock

don't have good water anymore.

[Ticking]

LESLEY STAHL, VOICE-OVER:

In the shale gas gold rush,

Dimock is the ghost town.

STAHL:
How many of you lost

your water supply?

MAN, VOICE-OVER:

They said, "Dad, we got gas in the water over there.

I can actually shake

the jug up and light it."

You put a match

to your water and it went up in flames?

I can take my water,

shake it up, turn it up,

and it will explode-like.

Scary?

FEMALE NEWS ANCHOR:

All Cabot representatives say

they don't believe

drilling operations caused the water problems.

WOMAN:
We're not

greedy people.

We just want some

justice for something

that's terribly wrong

that happened here.

[Equipment beeping]

[Engines chugging]

GIRL:
They look like

the Rovers on Mars.

WOMAN, ON PHONE:
Cabot said that

they were not responsible for the contamination of the wells.

It is a scary situation

to accuse a large corporation

of anything like that.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
After years

of trying to negotiate with Cabot, the drilling company,

the Dimock families

bound together to sue.

When the lawsuit broke,

so did their silence.

Bill Ely lit his water on fire

on every channel on television.

And Sheila Ely, his wife,

the mysterious voice

on the phone,

invited me over to look at some

of her documentation.

I like my pictures

on the wall.

When you have

frames, you can't

get all the pictures

up that you want.

FOX:
Uh-huh.

So I just laminate,

and I just keep

laminating and laminating.

I have a laminator.

BILL ELY:
My ancestors

settled this spot

right here, back in

the 1800s.

I'm, like,

fifth generation, and I hope there's

5 more generations

after me that live here.

And I'm not selling.

I'm not leaving.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Just across the road, their nephew,

Scott Ely, had worked

for Cabot.

Now he was the key witness

in their lawsuit.

Imagine working for a company

that destroyed

your family's water...

We feel like horses being

pushed to a dirty hole.

And, you know, horses

won't drink bad water. They just won't do it.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Or having to tell your kids that they can't swim

or fish in the creeks

and ponds you grew up in.

I like fishing.

I like frog-catching.

Me, too!

All I ever do for my life.

Yeah, even when we go

in the pond,

we try to catch fish,

we just get sick.

Cabot should just deal

with us in the courtroom.

They don't want to do that.

They want to street-fight all this.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

The big, strong Ely family was ready for a fight.

Up and down Carter Road,

Craig and Julie Sautner and Ray Kemble

had created a kind

of art installation

of their well water

on their front lawns...

All we want is to, you know,

have some kind of normalcy here.

We want good water.

That's all we want.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
And a kind of

leader and spokesperson emerged from the Dimock families.

I've gone to

every congressman, representative,

anyone who would listen:

DEP, Cabot, anyone I could think of.

Begged for water

from Cabot.

All these people

begged--begged for water.

They told us there would be

one well out here, one well.

And within the following year,

we have 30 wells now.

I dread to imagine

what's going to happen to property value out here.

How would you

advertise this house: "Bring your own water"?

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

There was so much noise coming out of Dimock,

it felt like the town was

standing in for the whole state.

But Dimock wasn't alone.

Over the past 4 years,

a huge change had swept

across Pennsylvania.

Governor Ed Rendell

had rolled out the red carpet

for the gas drilling industry.

Thousands of wells drilled...

thousands of reported

violations.

The "New York Times"

investigated and found that

wastewater from drilling was

being inadequately treated

and dumped back

into water supplies

all over Pennsylvania,

and with this much evidence

bubbling up across the state,

even the pro-drilling

Rendell administration

had to take action.

DEP issued violations to Cabot

and stopped them from drilling

in a 9-square-mile radius,

but no permanent solution

for residents' water contamination

had been proposed.

What the Dimock families

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