Gasland Part II Page #7

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Their first meeting, held

at the Elk Lake School,

had a gas well being drilled

right behind the football field.

MAN:
We're not here

for any confrontations.

Cabot is trying to pit

neighbor against neighbor with this whole deal,

and what it's doing is it's

destroying the community.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
Their main

speaker, a "oil and gas expert" employed by Cabot.

MAN:
I really would like

to give a bit of a primer,

a "Petroleum Engineering 101."

For those of you that read

the Bible, you will remember Noah's Ark.

It was caulked by bitumen

that had seeped to the surface

and biogenic gas,

which is generated from, uh,

I would say, neo--uh--

Neo--uh--ha ha ha!

[Clicks tongue]

What is water?

Casing needs to be set

to protect fresh water,

and that's not the term,

'cause "fresh water" is another definition that we don't have

unless it comes out

of this bottle.

Cheers, cla--

or cheers, group. Mmm.

Has anybody ever here

seen a Amish buggy?

Concluding thoughts,

and, yes, I will shut up...

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
In the end,

he said absolutely nothing

about what actually happened

to contaminate the aquifer.

It was a dog-and-pony show

hiding behind a smokescreen inside a hall of mirrors.

CABOT EXPERT:

So, for those of you that are looking for jobs--

not me because I'm too old--

you're looking at an industry

that's going to be around here

for a hundred years.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Then it happened.

Republican Attorney General

Tom Corbett

was elected Governor

of Pennsylvania.

Cue the saddest newscaster

in history.

Well, it turns out there will

not be a pipeline connecting

Dimock, Pennsylvania to the

Montrose Municipal Water System.

That word comes

from the PA Department of Environmental Protection,

which has dropped its plan

to force Cabot Oil & Gas

to pay for the nearly

$12 million project.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
Dimock

residents and Lance Simmens had fought hard for a policy

that should have been

a precedent for the rest of the state:

Contaminate a township's water,

and you're going to have

to pay for permanent public replacement.

FOX:
Was it your hope

that would have become

a standard?

Absolutely.

I thought

that it would have

a long-lasting

and pervasive effect.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
Unfortunately,

didn't work out that way.

Governor Ed Rendell and

John Hanger of the Department of Environmental Protection

made a deal, negotiating

without the participation of the Dimock families.

Cabot Oil & Gas would pay

each of the residents twice the value of their homes.

In other words, the state

and the gas companies

made a deal to tell

the people of Dimock to move.

Not surprisingly, the families

rejected the compromise.

The water line

would be canceled;

no precedent for water

replacement would be set.

FOX:
So you're upset with

the way the situation was handled?

I am not happy with

the fact that that water line was not built.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

During the same period of time,

3 of Ed Rendell's top aides,

including his

Executive Deputy Chief

of Staff, went to work

for the gas industry.

DEP Secretary John Hanger joined

a law firm and lobbying

organization that's a member

of the Marcellus Shale

Coalition and represents

Pennsylvania's Independent Oil

and Gas Association.

And Governor Ed Rendell himself

joined a private equity firm

with interests in

the natural gas industry,

going on to advocate publicly

for drilling without disclosing his industry ties.

All this switching sides led

the public accountability initiative to issue a report,

concluded that the lines between

government and industry had been blurred to a corrupting effect

and that the public bodies

charged with regulating industry

instead had become

captured by it.

SIMMENS:
You know,

the revolving door

between regulators

and the regulated industries

is as old

as bureaucracy itself.

I would never

underestimate the power

to make changes

in a system that is

as influenced as it is

by the power of money.

Does that mean that I

could never--I would never have foreseen

forces upending it,

delaying it, canceling it?

Nope, I've come to accept that

as a fact of life in this...

dysfunctional political system

that is not only true

in Pennsylvania,

but, I think,

on a much larger scale

throughout the country.

Is it horribly

unsafe?

Is that what

this fracking is?

I do not know of one well,

one--they always say

it contaminates the aquifer.

I've never seen that happen.

I'm sure there are

people, though, who would say, "I have.

And it's been on my land

and I've seen the toxicity."

[Wooden turkey call squeaking]

[Squeaking stops]

[Squeaking resumes]

[Squeaking stops]

[Squeak]

[Squeaking resumes]

[Distant thunder]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
Now,

I'm not much of a hunter-- you could probably tell--

but it was disappointing

to both Jeremiah and I

that we found a lot more

gas wells than turkeys.

JEREMIAH:

This is where we are. We are right here.

This, literally, is

the top of the ridge.

The elevation right here

is about 2,300 feet.

FOX:
So they just

took the top?

Yeah.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
One of the

first things that Tom Corbett did entering office

was to repeal the drilling

moratorium on state lands and state forests.

JEREMIAH:

Who needed those damn trees anyway?

This is only

a tiny taste of what's to come.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

In Pennsylvania, you live in the woods

just as much as you live

in your house.

Jeremiah and the Gee family...

they were getting

drilled on both.

JEREMIAH:
Look at that one.

That's my house right there. Ha ha ha!

They literally moved

that thing as close as they possibly could

to our property line.

We were told they were

going to put this well

quite a bit farther away,

like a thousand feet farther away than they did.

I took some shots of Ada,

see, like that one,

like, "I can dig

a hole, too."

Hey. How you doing?

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
About 200 feet

from Jeremiah's mother's window,

a 6-well horizontal pad.

JEREMIAH:
You know,

they have all that technology and they can work 24/7 drilling,

but, doggone it,

they can't stop water from going downhill

from up into--

from that earth...

FOX:
Right.

Into that pond.

You just can't do it.

And here's the

"chocolate milk"-type water

that is coming off

of the well pad.

May 2, 2011.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Contaminants were running

off the site onto his property

and killing his family's pond,

and under the ground,

methane had migrated into their water well.

JEREMIAH:
Holy cow.

Today's date is April 6, 2011.

You know I'll get

a phone call in a few minutes,

asking why I was

up here with a guy with a camera.

We were told,

point-blank, that

the word "freshwater"

does not mean what you think it means.

"Freshwater" means

"fresh to this site."

Every bit of water

that will be coming here

and used

in the frack tanks

has already been used

at a different site,

therefore,

it's "fresh" to us.

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