By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer Michael Rubinkam, Associated Press Writer – 40 mins ago
MILANVILLE, Pa. – What do you do when a gas company offers nearly $100,000 for the right to drill on your land?
If you're Josh Fox, you refuse the money — then make an award-winning do entary portraying the natural gas industry as an environmental menace that ruins water, air and lives.
In "Gasland," premiering Monday at 9 p.m. EDT on HBO, Fox presents a frightening scenario in which tens of thousands of drilling rigs take over the landscape, gas companies exploit legal loopholes to inject toxins into the ground and residents living nearby contract severe, unexplained illnesses.
This isn't some dystopian nightmare, Fox says, but the harsh reality in communities from Texas to Colorado to Pennsylvania. "People are feeling completely upended," the 37-year-old filmmaker said in an interview at his woodland home near the Pennsylvania-New York border, where gas companies have been leasing thousands of acres of pristine watershed land in anticipation of a drilling boom.
Fox says the natural gas industry is selling the American public a lie. The industry calls "Gasland" a deeply flawed piece of propaganda.
Whatever the truth, Fox's film arrives at a fraught time. Between the Gulf oil spill and several recent mishaps involving natural gas extraction, the public is focused on energy — and the increasingly complicated ways we are getting it.
Just as the Gulf catastrophe illustrated the hazards of unchecked deep-water oil drilling, so, too, are gas companies failing to make investments that will safeguard the environment when something goes wrong, Fox argues.
"After a while, the gas rig just seemed like a car made in 1890 ... something fundamentally unsafe," he declares in "Gasland." He wonders aloud whether it's better to force gas companies to clean up their act "or just say, 'The with it. Can't we build a solar panel instead?'"
Bespectacled, unshaven and the product of "hippie parents," Fox made his name as an avant-garde theater director in New York City. He took an interest in drilling after a gas company approached him in 2008 about leasing his family's wooded 20-acre spread in Milanville, near the Delaware River, where he has lived since childhood.
To Fox, the offer seemed too good to be true.
"That was nearly $100,000 right in my hands," he says in the film. "Could it be that easy?"
Intent on finding out, he casts himself in the role of a "natural gas drilling detective," hopping into his beat-up 1992 Toyota for a cross-country tour of places where large-scale drilling is already under way.
He begins in Dimock, Pa., where an exploding water well revealed methane contamination that has ruined residents' drinking water supplies. He's handed a jar of mysterious yellow-brown liquid and asked to find out what's in it, setting up the film's principal drama.
From there, Fox heads west. He hears the same story in town after town: contaminated water; fouled air; mysterious illnesses; a deceived citizenry; regulators who aren't regulating.
Fox struggles to remain optimistic, but the sheer enormity of it all — a drilling campaign in more than half the states — wears him down.
"I wanted to get out of Gasland as fast as I could, but there was nowhere to go," he says in the film.
"Gasland" has won critical acclaim — including a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival — but the industry has challenged its veracity. A 4,000-word rebuttal by a coalition of gas and oil producers asserts that Fox botched the facts, misstating the drilling process and the regulations that govern it, and spotlighting citizens whose claims have already been investigated and debunked.
"The object of the film is to shock, and not to enlighten," said Chris Tucker, spokesman for the Energy in Depth coalition. "If that's the kind of project you're trying to do, you're not going to let a few silly facts get in the way."
Fox insists that "Gasland" is accurate, rejecting the Energy in Depth analysis as a "ridiculous mischaracterization" of the film.
"The industry smears anybody who comes out and says what's actually happening. That's the kind of tactic they're well-known for," he said.
If gas companies are his primary target, "Gasland" apportions plenty of blame to politicians and bureaucrats, including former Vice President Cheney — who helped craft an energy bill that critics say exempted a controversial drilling technique from regulatory oversight — and the Obama administration.
"We're still asleep at the wheel," Weston Wilson, an Environmental Protection Agency scientist, whistle-blower and industry critic, tells Fox. "And don't assume, because Obama got elected, that something's changed at the EPA."
Fox is screening "Gasland" in towns throughout Pennsylvania and New York, hoping it will persuade on-the-fence homeowners to tell the gas companies to scram.
The same companies, meanwhile, are still trying to lease Fox's land. The latest offer arrived just a few weeks ago.
"Apparently, they didn't get the memo," said Fox, chortling. "Unbelievable!"
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One has to wonder.
The "controversial drilling technique" is probably "fracking", where solvents and so forth are injected into a well to boost production.
When done according to standard this is supposed to be done deep below the earth's surface, where it won't affect the water table.
Is there anybody who doubts that some companies, to maximize their profits, have cut corners on safety or used this technique in places that are much shallower?
Corps are guilty until proven innocent.
I heard some people in NY who were deeply regretting letting the drillers onto their property for the Marcellus shale.
Yeah, they're making some royalty money, but the trucks, lights, and noise are going 24-hours/day, plus the property is torn up. Never again, they say.
Yeah, I wonder about that too. However, in my days in the oil and gas business, now 3 decades ago (, screw me, I'm old!) we hired out all fracturing. Most contract frac houses, at the time, seemed pretty insistent on seeing the geology reports and determining whether or not the frac job was warranted. I dunno...might be a completely different game now.
when does this air?
I wouldn't watch an HBO do entary if you put a gun to my head. MSNBC with a few movies tossed in and some really good entertainment programming, ( sopranos et al ) but their political stuff is pure crap. Propaganda.
What if they put a gun to your crotch? Would you watch then?
I'm going to watch the beverly hillbillies movie tonight. The oil biz made old Jed a millionaire! "Oil that is, black gold, Texas style"
LOL, that's the stuff of an All-SpursTalk performer. Well done, sir. Well done.
is there one thing that you can't up regarding oil?
is there?
Here's a promo
I love that video. Mourning the 'death of a tree' while...surrounded by....trees.
Were they mourning a stump in a desert it would be so much more effective.
ps. One needs only to fly from Chicago to Anchorage to realize, there is no shortage of....trees. Or water for that matter.
I also wonder when 'extreme environmentalism' will show up in the DSM manual. That and a lot of other 'out of touch with reality' causes.
Last edited by word; 06-21-2010 at 10:28 PM.
I can't wait until some of y'all and your families die slow, painful degenerative deaths due to chromium and benzine exposure. Especially Jackoff and his family. I watched that and all I can say is that I truly hope Darrin, Jack and word live in the Ft. Worth area. You stupid s are a few of a few who would deserve it.
Is this another Michael Moore-on do entary?
That's disturbing.
The funniest thing they said last night was some dude would be sparking up the grill to make some burgers and blow up the whole town!
I wonder what materials were used to build these folks' homes?
Such venom and vitriol.
Corporate Gas Drilling Buries Indonesian Town in Methane Mud (Video)
http://www.truth-out.org/java-a-city...ws+Politics%29
Even the video doesn't claim the fault of the drilling as a certainty. It does point out the earthquake. This is most likely nature at work.
So basically what you are saying is that despite our best efforts, and the guarantees of the industry, the chemicals in the fracking process will end up in the water supplies anyways through natural earthquake activity?
I had not thought about that.
All the more reason to limit the process, IMO. I care much less about temporary natural gas production, and more about permanent contamination of water supplies that cannot be corrected. Do you agree?
I'm not stating any particular conclusion. just that it cannot be factually stated the drilling caused the problems.
Now in this case, I will agree the drilling was a bad choice. Only because it is in a very heavy earthquake zone.
Do we drill near the San Andreas fault? If so, we shouldn't.
This just popped up locally...new update:
http://www.wfaa.com/news/Cancer-caus...-96895604.html
I've own rental properties in North Ft. Worth. Chesapeake has been sending offers for drilling offsets in our area. I'm torn. Either I flat out refuse them, or I cash in now while I still can.
wild cobra you love picking the other side and debating.
Almost correct.
On issues I haven't drawn a conclusion of, I like to point out the possibilities I think are being overlooked.
Since when did gas drilling hazards need exposing? I've always known it was dangerous. I'm glad there are people willing to get that stuff out of the ground so I can boil water.
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