Gasland Part II Page #5

---

because it just--your grass

will light on fire.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

With a store-bought methane detector,

Steve Lipsky would walk in

and out of his house,

gauging whether or not

it might explode.

[Rapid clicking]

But more sophisticated

air-monitoring devices had been installed

just down the road

in Dish, Texas.

Dish, Texas, changed

its name in a PR deal

to receive 10 free years

of Dish Network.

There's still 4 years

of free Dish in Dish, and now,

with 10 pipelines crisscrossing

the town and wells dappling the landscape,

there's also a lot of free gas

and other volatile organic compounds

floating around

in the atmosphere.

And even our regulatory

agencies here in Texas

didn't seem to know

what was being emitted.

We did mapping of the chemicals.

For example, this is

benzene, short-term.

This is probably a mile.

FOX:
Wow.

So that's the one hour.

If you're exposed to this

for one hour, in theory,

there could be negative

side effects.

And if you look at every one

of these chemicals--

trimethyl sulfide.

Trimethyl benzene with

sulfur compounds,

but it's a neurotoxin.

For benzene, you came over

to probably here. Uh-huh.

If you looked at

the sulfur compounds... Right.

you covered this map.

You still can't give up.

Together we bargain,

divided we beg.

Is daddy the Mayor?

Um...

I've done a lot

of speeches with them sitting in the front row.

FOX:
Do you guys get bored

when he's talking?

Yeah!

Ha ha!

You do?

WOMAN, VOICE-OVER:

It really started to bother me

when my boys were

having nosebleeds.

Josh, he'd wake up

and then he'd be panicked

because he has blood everywhere.

Seeing my baby

in that way was kind of

traumatizing.

At what point do you say--

nosebleeds are one thing,

but I don't want to see

my child with leukemia

and then look back and go,

"Well, if I had moved,

maybe my child

would be healthy."

Knowing what I know,

it's my duty

as a U.S. citizen

and a human here

that we go

and share

our experiences here.

You know, 3 years ago,

I was a Republican.

Now I'm an Independent.

You know, we just--

the things that they did,

they just pissed

all over us, you know?

But what they're doing here is

the biggest assault

on private property rights

that I've ever heard or seen.

And they're supposed

to be Conservatives?

That's one of the founding

principles of conservatism, is private property rights.

And you've got no

private property rights, not in Texas, at least.

Now, we got married

right here.

FOX:
Right on the steps?

Right down there.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Bob and Lisa Parr aren't the sickly type,

and with trophy deer,

elk, mountain lions,

and, yes, even a grizzly bear

mounted throughout the house,

they're not

your typical tree-hugging environmentalists, either.

You know you're

a red neck if your taxidermy bill

is a lot larger

than your mortgage.

Ha ha ha!

Maybe I fit in.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Lisa and Bob Parr built their dream home

in Wise County, Texas,

not far from Fort Worth in the Barnett Shale.

But now, Lisa Parr had

fracking chemicals in her lungs.

Where our house is,

there's 21 wells

that is around us.

So, pretty much,

it doesn't matter

what wind direction

we have,

it's blowing it

to our house.

I come home,

I have a dead chicken.

The dog's laying

in the yard, I can't get her head up.

My daughter looks up,

her rash is all over her face.

She has a nosebleed.

Bob has a nosebleed.

Burning throat,

burning eyes.

I had a rash.

It covered my scalp.

It went through

my entire body,

literally to the bottoms

of my feet.

My throat would start

swelling.

I started gasping

for air.

I started stuttering.

I started stumbling.

My face drew up

on my left side

like I had Bell Palsy.

They have detected,

uh...

numerous chemicals

in my body tissues.

The hydrogen chloric

acid is what they use before they frack,

but that was

the number-one thing in my lungs.

LISA PARR, VOICE-OVER:

My internal specialist told me--

[Clears throat]

that if we didn't...

move...

that we would spend

more time and money

in hospitalization,

chemotherapy,

and morticians.

I moved here. I married

this wonderful man.

[Clears throat]

And...

I cannot ask him

to leave his house.

I can't do it.

But now we've been

forced to because we're all sick.

And they found it

in our blood and in our organs,

and we have to go

through treatment.

And I want to find a way

to come back home.

My daughter has spent most

of her time with me

in the past year picking me

up off the floor.

That's her drawing.

She had just found out

when she drew this

that we were going to have

to move out of our house.

For two weeks, she cried all

the way to school, but now she's adjusting really well.

This is the hardhats.

FOX:
Yeah.

Ha ha ha!

It says, "Clean

Ure Mess! Okay?"

And they say "Okay?"

with a question mark.

Thought that was really weird

coming from a second-grader, like, "Okay?"

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

While Lisa Parr's daughter was making drawings

asking the gas companies

to clean up their mess,

the gas industry was making

their own drawings--

not by children, for children--

sponsoring schools

and science fairs

and sending out coloring books

featuring "Talisman Terry,

the Friendly Fracosaurus,"

or a dog mascot

for Chesapeake Energy,

dedicating several children's

books to Calvin Tillman's library in Dish.

CALVIN TILLMAN:
This is

from Atlas Pipeline.

This is from Devon Energy.

Another one from Devon.

There's the Atlas Pipeline.

"To the children of Dish

in honor of Mayor Calvin Tillman from the Atlas Pipeline, Texas."

FOX:
So, as far

as the situation in Barnett Shale

that I've witnessed,

all these families who are in deep trouble medically--

Move. Move.

They need to move.

Different people have

different tolerance levels.

If people are getting sick,

they need to take

the losses financially

and get out of where they are.

They--I mean,

your personal health is more important than anything else.

Do you say that

to 65% of Pennsylvania, 50% of New York--

No, I'd say fight

where you can fight and make a difference,

but if I had kids with

health issues because they're living in the Barnett Shale,

or if I had health issues

living in the Barnett Shale, I'd move.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

The gas industry hit back,

mounting a smear campaign

against Al Armendariz,

Calvin Tillman,

and openly challenging Lisa Parr in the media.

But possibly the most

extreme reaction was to Steve and Shyla Lipsky.

Range Resources filed

a $4 million defamation lawsuit against the Lipsky family,

a slap suit meant

to keep them quiet.

The gas industry

had defended many lawsuits extremely aggressively,

but this was the first time

that I knew about

that they were actually taking

a family to court.

But behind closed doors,

the gas industry's strategy was even uglier.

At a Texas Oil & Gas

industry conference,

reporters made tape recordings

of gas-industry strategy,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes