Gasland Part II (2013) - full transcript

♪

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:

We have a supply of natural gas

that can last America

nearly 100 years...

[APPLAUSE]

and my administration will take

every possible action

to safely develop this energy.

The development of natural gas

will create jobs

and power trucks and factories

that are cleaner and cheaper,

where we develop a hundred-year

supply of natural gas

that's right beneath our feet.

BILL CLINTON: The boom

in oil and gas production

has driven oil imports

to a near-20-year low

and natural gas production

to an all-time high.

HILARY CLINTON:

The United States will promote the use of shale gas.

Now I know that, in some places,

is controversial.

PAUL RYAN: With 21st-century

drilling technology,

you can get it out of the ground

in a very safe and secure way.

MITT ROMNEY:

I don't recall hearing about water being on fire.

We will have

North American energy.

We're going to be independent.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, God bless you,

and God bless

the United States of America.

MAN, VOICE-OVER: Hi.

♪

My name is Josh Fox.

This is my house.

It's in the middle of the woods,

tucked away on a dirt road

in a small town next

to the Delaware River

called Milanville, Pennsylvania.

Just past my backyard,

there's a stream

that feeds the Delaware.

It's been 5 years

since the first proposal

to drill thousands of gas wells

in the Delaware River Basin

came knocking at my door.

Every day you wake up with it--

the fate of my backyard,

the watershed for millions

of people--

up in the air.

Sometimes,

you can't figure out

what's going on

in your own backyard

without figuring out all

the places around the world

that your backyard's

connected to.

And, as we know, in sequels,

the Empire strikes back.

So let's start where

we left off...

when the tide came in.

♪

It was hard to believe my eyes.

As far as I could see,

the surface of the Gulf,

streaked with oil like ghosts

along the surface.

Nothing could really

prepare you.

We hadn't seen pictures

like this on the news.

It had been widely reported

that journalists' flights

were restricted

to 3,000 feet and above.

Journalists would call up

the FAA to clear their flights,

and BP would answer the phone.

And I don't know why.

Maybe because it was a Sunday.

Maybe because it was the Fourth

of July, and everybody was off.

But somehow, we got clearance to

fly at any altitude we wanted,

so this is what

it really looked like.

♪

Down on the ground,

we weren't so lucky--

limited access to beaches--

but we weren't the only ones

hitting roadblocks.

I was getting

pretty good at this.

You don't really have time

to sit back

and say, "Why the hell

is this happening?"

Why is BP...

Are they in the back pocket?

They got a cozy deal?

Is their lobbyist in Washington

controlling this?

But, um, something stinks.

We're fighting harder with

the Coast Guard and BP

than we're fighting the oil.

I don't even want to start

to imagine things that--

Why would this be?

Why would they be protected?

FOX, VOICE-OVER: We found out

that BP was spraying chemical dispersants

on surfaces of the Gulf

in huge volumes.

A chemical that had been

banned in Britain

actually makes the oil

more toxic

and sinks it out of sight.

They weren't solving

the crisis, just hiding it.

It's going to be ugly

if we quit spraying dispersant.

It's going to be black oil

all over the surface.

But this monster that continues

to grow every day,

at least it's not invisible.

Right now, they're making it

invisible, impossible to fight.

For every decision they've made

throughout the catastrophe,

there's been huge negative

impacts, and we--

the people of Louisiana,

Mississippi,

Alabama, and Florida--

are going to have to deal

with those negative impacts

for a very, very long time.

FOX: Years? Decades?

SUBRA: Decades,

decades. Generations.

And that's what is

so devastating

to the fishing

communities.

FOX: So all

the dispersant does is it makes the oil sink?

It makes it sink,

and it spreads it

throughout

the water column and into the sediment.

And most of the water

column and the sediment

have been damaged

or destroyed

as far as aquatic

organisms are concerned

because it's toxic.

We lost the Gulf

of Mexico

as far as an ecosystem,

as a productive

ecosystem.

We didn't lose

the Gulf of Mexico

as a source

of fuel, fossil fuel.

And that drilling

and production will continue,

even though

the ecosystem has been destroyed.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

What I was learning in the Gulf

was that no matter

how huge the catastrophe was,

what really mattered was

who was telling the story.

Let's go catch the sunset,

guys, then we'll come back in and check.

You know, if I get sick

in 20 years, so be it,

but my kids' bodies

are still developing.

They say, "Oh, well,

everything's fine,

"but stay inside your house

and keep your doors closed

and your air conditioner

on recirculation."

You know, I was taught

not to throw so much as a Coke can in the Bayou.

This is our home.

This is where we eat,

sleep, live.

This is us. We're Bayou people.

People don't understand

something. This isn't just about an income.

This is about an entire way

of life in its entirety.

We'll go out here and catch

150 pounds of shrimp,

or go craw fishing

in the ditches or whatever,

a couple of hundred

pounds of craw fish.

5 or 6 families will get

together, no alcohol,

boil seafood, barbecue whatever,

and we have family time.

You know, without that there,

I mean, yeah,

we could cook other food,

but what about going in the bayou

and going in the pirogue with

the kids, with no video games,

no TV, no nothing?

One on one, some people go

into the mountains behind their house,

and they become one

with nature.

That's the bayou for us.

If it's not there, what's

the point of being here?

We're going to have

a dead fishery, contaminated land,

a bag full of bills,

and a court date when this--

when the federal government

tells BP that their cleanup has been completed.

Why stay?

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

That's when it hit me

how much of this whole culture

was going to have to move.

When I got home

from the Gulf, there was a new surprise neighbor.

The Delaware River

Basin Commission

was debating a new plan

to open up the river basin

to 18,000 gas wells.

The Commission had approved

15 exploratory wells,

and one was about a mile

from my house.

Wait. Stop.

I really want to start

at the middle,

but I got to start

at the beginning.

My parents built our house

in the Upper Delaware

in the same year

I was born, 1972.

It was my father's dream,

and my mom filled it with furniture.

He told my mother, "I want

to build a house of love."

I want to build a house

of love for you."

He ended up building it

out of a $2.00 diagram

out of "Popular Mechanics."

For my father--

a Holocaust survivor born

in Russia, fleeing the Nazis;

and for my mother, the child

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

really wanted was permanent public water,

and someone who could

make it happen finally showed up to listen.

MAN, VOICE-OVER: Lance Simmens.

I was special assistant

to Governor Ed Rendell

for Intergovernmental Affairs.

My primary responsibility

was to make sure

that the Governor knew, on the ground,

what was going on

in local communities.

There was something

obviously drastically wrong with this picture.

It's like, you know,

3 apples and a nail.

And I said point-blank

to the Governor,

who was sitting

within about 18 inches

from me in a meeting

one day, I said,

"We have got to get the people

of Dimock clean water.

"This is the United States

of America, and we need to have this

as a primary right for all

of our citizens."

He agreed and he asked me

what we should do about it.

And I said, "Let's connect

to a public water supply."

FOX, VOICE-OVER: After Lance

Simmens got to the governor,

it felt like

a new day in Dimock.

Pushed by a new policy,

Department of Environmental

Protection Secretary John Hanger

releases videotapes

of Dimock wells.

We have video

of gas bubbling at those gas wells.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

The DEP revealed that Dimock wells

had inadequate cement,

cracked cement, or no cement.

The crucial part of the well

that's supposed to keep gas

from migrating

into aquifers had failed,

showing scientifically

that Cabot Oil & Gas

had contaminated

Dimock's water with methane.

[Drilling equipment clanging]

But PA DEP had the videos

for a year and a half,

so John Hanger, Secretary

of the Department, was in

the uncomfortable position of

calling his own administration's policy inadequate,

while at the same time

playing the hero.

HANGER: We've had people

here in Pennsylvania

without safe

drinking water for close to two years.

That is totally,

totally unacceptable.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

The new policy was startling,

although it was just

common sense.

Pennsylvania would build

a water line to Dimock

from Montrose, 7 miles away--

the nearest municipal

water supply--

and the state would sue

Cabot Oil & Gas

for the cost--$12 million.

Protestors in the crowd

lifted signs of other towns in Pennsylvania

that had similar problems,

saying, "We, too, need a water line,"

insisting that the Dimock

water line be a precedent for the state.

Coming home from Dimock,

my own situation was escalating.

The only place

they hadn't managed to drill

in Pennsylvania was

the Delaware River Basin.

It's the border

with New York State,

and there are hundreds

of streams, tributaries

to form that mighty river.

15 million people get

their drinking water

out of the Delaware

River Basin--

New York City, Philadelphia,

and southern New Jersey.

A lot depends on nothing

ever happening up here.

There's an old adage:

"You can't ever step in

the same stream twice."

And from growing up

running up and down a trout stream connecting

to the Delaware River, it's

fairly obvious how that's true.

Every year, the snow melt

carves out a slightly new bank.

Every year,

the spring thaw rushes in,

takes down a few trees.

Every year, a new beach head,

a place where a swimming hole

is slightly deeper.

And, depending on the rainfall

and the weather,

there could be

a rushing current,

or a boulder revealed

by a drought that you've never seen before.

But in this case,

something besides nature had changed this.

Pro-drilling landowners

in my county

had leased over 80,000 acres.

The stream's always been

my property line, and now, just across from me,

I could wake up and see off

my front porch every day

the other side of the stream

was now leased.

If drilling began,

that side would be controlled

by the gas industry.

Now it didn't matter

that my family never signed.

I was completely surrounded,

and if they drilled,

you'd never step in

the same stream again.

The River Basin is controlled

by a 5-member body--

4 governors of the states

that border the river

and a representative

from the president--

and New York State had

been paying attention to what was going on

in Pennsylvania and

throughout the country.

The New York legislature passed

a one-year moratorium on drilling throughout New York,

and the federal government

was also taking a look.

Prompted by Maurice Hinchey,

congressman from New York,

the Federal Environmental

Protection Agency begins a two-year study

of the effects of hydraulic

fracturing on groundwater,

and EPA Administrator

Lisa Jackson declares

that if states are falling

down on the job enforcing regulations,

then the federal government

will step in.

One such failed state

was Wyoming,

and one such town was

a tiny little place called Pavillion.

My backyard, New York,

and national policy tied

to tiny little places

like Pavillion.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

EPA moved in and did

a full groundwater study,

testing for hundreds of chemicals

related to gas drilling

and the gas itself.

MAN: This is the ultimate

detective novel.

I mean, these people are

scientists and detectives

and researchers,

and they are doing an extraordinary job,

but they are absolutely

moving mountains to get this done.

FOX, VOICE- OVER: Most people

in the west don't own their mineral rights,

so when the gas company

showed up in Pavillion, drilling over a hundred wells,

landowners had no control

over where wells were drilled

and no share of the revenue.

FENTON: So, you know, they have

all this "Danger," you know, "No unauthorized personnel,"

but it's in the middle

of my field. I have to--

Now that we've got a big

oil field location

in the middle of the field,

we have to irrigate around it.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

On August 31, 2010,

the EPA released results

showing contamination

in 19 out of

the water wells tested.

Even though those chemicals

are in fracking fluids,

Encana--the company

doing the drilling-- denied responsibility,

and Wyoming's governor was

openly hostile towards the EPA.

Because of the gas

industry's exemption to the Safe Drinking Water Act,

they're not required to report

which chemicals they're using.

The investigation was ongoing,

but EPA told Pavillion residents

not to drink their water.

[Water running]

Just down the road, Louis Meeks,

John Fenton's neighbor.

Want a cold drink

of water? FOX: Yeah.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

His water still smelled like turpentine.

This company come in,

right in the middle of our place,

and we didn't do

nothing to them.

It ain't no mansion,

I know it ain't no mansion, but it's home to us.

We was happy here.

We have a garden.

And we have fruit trees.

You know, there ain't much we need.

Our kids were raised here.

They rodeo'd and everything else, you know, and, um...

And this is the life

we wanted, but look at it now.

You want me to shut

my mouth?

I'm not gonna.

Do you want to see

them letters I wrote to the President? FOX: Sure.

You know, I never was

a tree hugger or anything,

but, you know, something

needs to be done.

I mean, you know,

this is terrible.

FOX: And you only got

the letter in return from EPA?

Yeah.

In terms of EPA, don't you think there's some hope there?

WOMAN: Yeah,

I hope there is,

but the state's

fighting it worse than Encana.

Yeah.

Encana's not fighting them.

FOX: Wait a minute.

The state is fighting EPA? Yup.

They say the Fed's

trying to run the state government,

so what they're doing

is trying to keep the EPA out of here.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Every day, John Fenton walks out into the field,

switches the direction

of the irrigation pumps--

surface water from a canal

that the dog can drink,

but that humans can't.

His own water, his groundwater,

that should be pure,

he knows is contaminated.

FENTON: The chemical that's

in our water, it's, uh,

something that's only

been seen a couple times.

[Fox scoffs]

So--I mean, ever.

If this world worked

the way it should,

if the laws were designed

to protect the people

and to protect

the environment and not to make corporations rich,

they'd have

the chemical list in front of them.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

There's a natural filtration system in the earth--

layers and layers

of mycelium in the ground,

filtering out bacteria

that can cause illness--

but natural filtration won't

take out fracking chemicals,

and once contaminants get in

the ground, they're nearly impossible to get out.

You have a whole series

of rivers and streams and lakes,

basically, underground,

you know,

that now have all these

interconnecting faults and cracks between them.

And even if you don't

count the fractures,

you have a bunch

of well bores that are penetrating everywhere.

I don't know how you would

ever restore that

or how you would ever right

a problem in there.

The people you

talk to and you ask, "Well, can you fix this?"

Heh heh!

You get, "We don't know,"

but you read the look

on somebody's face and it says more than their words, you know?

And I would tend to think

that it's going to be this way from here on out.

FOX: So there's going

to be some source of contamination

into the aquifer here

that's going on...

Well, it's going

to outlast me.

♪

FOX, VOICE-OVER: In 2009,

an air-quality researcher

at Southern

Methodist University,

Dr. Al Armendariz, figured out

that the 7,700 gas wells

in the Barnett Shale

caused as much air pollution

as all of the cars and trucks

in the Dallas-Fort Worth

Metroplex.

The Texas Commission

on Environmental Quality had no idea,

the TCEQ had no idea

how many gas wells were being put in

and were in the ground

around the city of Fort Worth.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Now, there are 15,000 gas wells in the Barnett Shale.

Looking at it from Google Earth,

the pock-marked landscape looks like an alien landing zone.

Al Armendariz was appointed

by Obama to be Regional Administrator of EPA

for Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma,

Louisiana, and New Mexico.

♪

So, do you want to talk

about Barnett Shale?

Unfortunately,

because Texas wealth is

built on this industry,

this industry controls

state government.

But they're so busy doing

the denial thing.

You can't help the alcoholic

till they're willing

to recognize that

they got a problem.

The industry here

is not willing

to recognize that

they got a problem.

They want to fight back.

They don't want to--

the idea of any kind

of governmental regulation is reprehensible to them

unless they're in control

of writing the rules that are written.

There's really absolutely

nothing new about this.

I mean, we've been doing

resource extraction at the expense

of indigenous populations

the entire history of this country.

Kind of unique to

the situation is

you've got a lot of upper

middle-class white people

with college degrees

getting ticked off 'cause they're being treated

the way third-world people

have always been treated by corporate America.

♪

Just because you have

a nice house doesn't mean

they're not going

to drill underneath it.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Steve and Shyla Lipsky weren't born with a silver spoon.

Self-made millionaires, built

a 12,000-square-foot dream home

in Parker County, Texas.

The house was completed

September of last year.

♪

OK, master.

Our tub, that we don't

use anymore

because it takes 200 gallons

and we can't afford it. Ha ha!

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

I never met anyone prouder of their new house

than Steve Lipsky.

And the beach.

Ha ha ha!

♪

My whole house,

I can control everything on my phone.

Waterfall's on.

You want to see it now?

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

But just outside of their gated community,

Range Resources drilled

a horizontal well

directly underneath their house.

This is the well.

Again.

Whoa!

There you go.

FOX: So, this is

going to make you sell this house?

Or walk away

from it or something? What are you going to--

What are your--I mean--

We don't know. Again, we simply--

Tell me what you're

going to do. Well, what--

If we have--well,

who's going to buy it? You know what?

What I'll probably do

is sell this

and then have the gas company

sue me for selling their gas.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: So much gas

venting off the headspace of their water well

that the hose never

failed to light.

Steve and Shyla Lipsky

went to the EPA for help, who immediately swept in

and issued an Imminent and

Substantial Endangerment Order against Range Resources,

saying that if the well water

continued to go into the house,

the house could explode.

You know, it's the first time

the Environmental Protection Agency

has ever blamed groundwater

contamination on natural gas drilling in the Barnett Shale.

ARMENDARIZ: We've ordered Range

to begin an investigation

and to take all necessary steps

to stop the migration

of the natural gas

into the drinking water aquifer.

We actually moved out

of our house

because we knew

how dangerous it was,

and then went and had

the water tested.

And I do give a lot of credit

for the EPA stepping in.

Well, they tell us

they can't contaminate the water wells,

but clearly they can,

so can they contaminate the river or the lake?

Our kids swim

in that, too.

This is the well water.

Mm-hmm.

It's positive

for methlylene blue active substances.

STEVE LIPSKY: Which is

basically detergents that they use for drilling.

There's no reason

that should be in my well.

It was positive for boron,

magnesium, and strontium.

Under the volatiles,

positive for benzene

and toluene.

This is

the water test again,

over the reporting limit

for both ethane and methane.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: Despite EPA's

enforcement action,

Steve and Shyla Lipsky

were on their own,

paying for water deliveries

a thousand dollars a month.

STEVE LIPSKY: The laboratory

said it was off the charts.

They'd never seen

something so high,

and they were amazed that it

came out of a water well.

They said you have

to tell that homeowner that he cannot use it,

not for anything, and including

even watering the yard

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,

recording several brainstorming

and tactic-sharing conversations.

[Man on tape]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Psychological operations are employed in a war zone

to destabilize a population

from insurgency against an invading army.

PSYOPS were used

by the American military in Vietnam, in Iraq.

And here the gas industry was,

employing former PSYOPS experts

to actually write local laws

and develop techniques to be used against landowners

fighting the gas industry

in Texas and in Pennsylvania.

And Chesapeake had its own plan,

characterizing people fighting

the gas industry as insurgents.

MICHAEL D. KEHS, VOICE-OVER:

Chesapeake has got nearly 100 people

whose sole jobs are to deal

with community relations.

We have got people

going out and speaking in the community every night.

Basically, my entire career

has been dealing with audiences at chemical risk.

In almost every instance

where I've gone up against

a strong activist insurgency,

it does not matter

what the facts are

because the facts stand in

the way of your ability to raise funds.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: The gas

industry was trading notes on their war effort.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Counterinsurgency,

strategies for managing outrage.

destabilization of communities.

These are terms of war,

but like the PowerPoint says,

you can't dramatically

change global energy

without ruffling some feathers.

It didn't seem to matter that

the Defense Department had ruled

that it was illegal

for the military to use PSYOPS techniques against Americans.

♪

And, of course,

the next logical step

would be to start looking

for some terrorists.

Tom Ridge, former governor

of Pennsylvania

and the former and first

head of the Department of Homeland Security,

appointed right after

9/11, signs on to be the Chief Spokesman

for the Marcellus Shale

Coalition, an industry group

that fights environmental

regulation of gas drilling.

The very next month,

the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security

begins issuing briefs that lists

anti-fracking protest groups

as "possible eco-terrorists."

The bulletin said

that environmental extremism

trending towards eco-terrorism

and criminality

was a rising threat to

the security of Pennsylvania.

Virginia Cody, a retired

Air Force officer living near Dimock,

was forwarded

the August 30th bulletin.

She then posted it

on a gas drilling listserv.

When she did that,

unbelievably,

Pennsylvania Homeland Security

Chief James Powers wrote her

an email, assuming that she was

a pro-gas-drilling stakeholder,

actually indicated that

the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security

had communication

with pro-drilling groups like the Marcellus Shale Coalition.

PA Homeland Security

was showing up at protests,

spying on gas drilling

activists,

but they weren't only

sending the information to law enforcement;

they were sending it

to the gas industry.

Lisa Baker, my state senator,

a Republican,

held hearings

into the misconduct.

SENATOR BAKER: Raise

your right hand for me. We're going to swear in.

For the first time

in my life, I do not feel secure in my home.

I worry that what I say

on the phone is being recorded.

I wonder if my emails

are still being monitored.

Mr. Powers, I have not

had one person come forward

and say they believe

these bulletins were vital.

The information

that's sought by

the local municipalities

was situation awareness.

Situational awareness.

It was just

situational awareness.

It was just

about situational awareness.

FEMALE SENATOR:

None of it really makes any sense to me at all,

that we would go monitor

private citizens and private groups

and they're not

a threat to us, is what you were just saying.

"It's just for

awareness." It makes absolutely no sense.

And it does make me

think, "Where are we living?"

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

As it turned out, the state of Pennsylvania had a contract

with a group called

the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response.

A quick web search

turned up their website,

which featured pictures

of a scary owl,

an Israeli SWAT Team member,

and a strange blue hand

playing chess.

MALE SENATOR:

So what is your payroll?

What is your

employee payroll?

Is it 3?

Is it a hundred?

What is it?

I'm just curious.

It's more than 3 and it's

less than a hundred.

You know, you're

very creepy.

No, no.

You're very scary.

[Laughter]

No, I'm trying to be honest with you.

I don't know

if you're bi-polar or you have issues.

I mean, you're a very

scary individual. BAKER: Senator Ferlo,

and this is not for us--

OK, but let me ask a specific question.

to make comments about

individuals personally.

I have 12 staff

people. I'm just asking a question.

How many employees

do you have?

We have

about 15 employees...

and that doesn't include

the 70-some additional

employees that--

Operatives, or whatever

you call them, or--

People who, uh...

Because this is just

too unbelievable,

too surreal,

this hearing.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

After the hearings, James Powers resigned,

but there were

no indictments, no charges,

no real investigation of the

recipients of these Pennsylvania intelligence bulletins,

including Tom Ridge's

Marcellus Shale Coalition.

The trust barrier

had been broken.

And, that moment on,

none of us knew

if our names appeared on lists

of possible terrorists

somewhere in a strange

blue filing cabinet,

and two years of hard-fought

progress in Pennsylvania was about to unravel.

♪

FOX-VOICE-OVER:

When the water line in Dimock was announced,

it had a ripple effect

across the state.

Towns and municipalities drafted

ordinances to ban drilling

outright at the local level,

including the entire city of Pittsburgh.

850,000 people,

and I'm one of them,

drink water out of

the Monongahela River.

When it tastes funny,

I get nervous,

and it tastes funny.

Really, this is about

a civil rights issue.

This is about

our inalienable rights.

I said, "Can you regulate

my inalienable rights

"that are embodied in

the Pennsylvania Constitution

"to clean air, clean water,

and the preservation

"of the natural environment

for generations,

"for now, and for

generations to come?

Can you regulate

those rights away?" "No."

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

But an election was underway, and the leading candidate,

Tom Corbett, had accepted

$1.6 million in campaign contributions

from the gas industry and was

running on a drilling platform.

With the election just weeks

away, the gas companies went all-in in Dimock,

attacking the water line

and the families.

Full-page ads

in local newspapers,

a YouTube video campaign

declaring Dimock water safe...

I'd like to show you

how dangerous this Dimock water is.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: Threats to

pull out jobs in rural areas.

They even riled up a start-up

group called Enough Already,

saying that the water line

was going to come from taxpayer money.

You want to fire up a crowd?

Tell them they're going to pay higher taxes.

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.

So my question was,

"Could we just call it fresh enough water?"

And the answer was,

"Yes."

I also asked,

point-blank, "Does it have chemicals in it?"

And the answer was,

"Yes."

We have methane

in our water already

that we did not have

before.

Our pre-drill test

proved that our water

was pristine beyond

anybody's standards.

They will tell you

point blank there is no way

that frack fluid

will migrate. Right.

And yet other

hydrogeologists, who are not

on the gas company's

payroll, will tell you

it's not a question

of if it can migrate;

it's a question of when

it will migrate.

Every single one

of these gas-well guys that's come here

has said,

"Wow, you guys have a really nice place."

And we say,

"Thank you,

but you mean we had a really nice place."

The realtor told us

it's worth zero dollars and zero cents.

Tell me about

these water tanks. So...

on the day

that Shell found out,

they instantly brought

these water buffaloes.

This is what we call

"blue water."

I mean, that's my term

for it--"blue water." It's blue.

Because it's blue. Ha!

We don't drink it.

Right.

We drink bottled water.

We can't use it

for our animals 'cause it--

I don't trust this.

I don't know what this is.

The dogs have been

drinking Nestle brand water.

It says "Pure Life."

"Enhanced with minerals

for taste," and then

there are these happy

stick-figure people here

who are about to get

swept away by a tsunami of "Pure Life." Ha ha!

Well, I was thinking

about the 5 cents in Oregon.

If I could get those

empty water bottles 3,000 miles away,

I could get 5 cents out

of each one of those.

They don't ask

for those bottles back.

This is what

the chickens drink now.

I don't know any other chickens

in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, that drink bottled water.

Cluck, cluck, cluck.

Anybody want to say hi?

FOX, VOICE-OVER: After

the Gee family reported they could light their water on fire,

Shell tried several times

to squeeze, or fix the cement job.

All the while, the gas industry

in public continued

to deny any instances

of water contamination.

This just didn't make sense.

Everywhere I had gone, whether

it was Texas or PA

or Colorado, there were

the same problems.

I'd seen all this on the

surface, but what was actually happening under the ground?

♪

Please welcome Tom Ridge.

You are the former Governor

of the great State

of Pennsylvania,

the Keystone State,

first Secretary of Homeland Security.

Now, you're a lobbyist for

the natural gas industry.

We've all seen the footage

of flaming water.

Whoa!

Is that really

happening to people's water supply, sir?

Out here is the rock.

We're looking in

a cross section of a well

that's being drilled

because, ultimately,

you want your gas

to come up

the steel pipe.

That inch, right there,

this is cement.

And what you don't want

is for that cement to fail...

Mm-hmm.

or to be absent,

to crack, to corrode,

to crumble, to disappear.

If what's down there

can get into this annulus...

Right.

then it can migrate.

Yes, it is happening

to some water supplies,

and it has absolutely

nothing to do with hydraulic fracting.

Methane gas is

naturally occurring.

They've had methane gas--

I'm speaking as a governor-- in some of our water wells

in Pennsylvania long before

any wells, frack wells, were located next to them.

Those are phenomena that

are very well known,

for as long as we've

been drilling wells, encasing them.

Naturally occurring

methane gas often ends up in water wells,

but there has not been

a single proven instance

where it has been related

to hydraulic fracking.

So now the shallow gas goes

into an open annulus,

pressurizes the annulus,

gas migrates into an underground

source of drinking water,

somebody's water well.

In my field, there are only

3 things that are certain:

death, taxes, and fracture.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Meet Professor Tony Ingraffea--

professor of engineering

at Cornell;

a two-time winner of the

National Research Council Award

for rock mechanics research;

co-winner of a NASA Group

Achievement Award;

a former researcher for

Schlumberger, the number-one fracking company in the world,

and for the Gas

Research Institute;

proud Sicilian;

accomplished turkey hunter;

and in 2011, one of "TIME"

Magazine's People Who Mattered.

But I like to think of him

as the godfather of cement.

Hundreds of thousands of

on-shore wells and thousands of off-shore wells,

there's a probability

of maybe one in 20

that a cement job will

fail immediately.

FOX: One in 20?

One in 20.

So 5%.

5% of all wells

immediately will show

a failure of a cement job,

and there will be methane migration.

Because that means

that this annulus, the area

between the casing

and the rock,

is now open

from below to above.

You now have a migration

pathway so that anything that's down there

in the way of salts,

heavy metals,

other deleterious things

that were stored in the rock,

now have a pathway and

a vector and something to carry them upwards.

I'm using the round number

of a hundred thousand Marcellus wells... FOX: Right.

in Pennsylvania alone, OK?

Right.

If one out of 20 is going

to immediately show a cement failure,

now we're talking

5,000 wells.

If that one water well

is going bad, it means that aquifer--

as what happened in Dimock,

it's the one aquifer that was servicing all those water wells.

9 square miles.

Yeah.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Professor Ingraffea was basically telling me

that a gas well is

a long, steel pipe surrounded by an inch of cement,

and that that cement

cracks often.

But there's one part

of a gas well that he didn't mention--the PR department.

So my job, and I do have

a paid job as a consultant with the industry,

is to make sure,

as Pennsylvania, that we take advantage of the resources.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

I needed to talk to an expert in that part of the operation.

Naomi Oreskes, author of

the book "Merchants of Doubt,"

traced disinformation campaigns

from big tobacco all the way up

to climate change.

If we say, you know,

"Oh, yes, oil and gas come out of people's

taps naturally,"

you know, a lot of people just don't know.

They think, "Oh, really?

Is that true? You know-- Oh, well, I have heard

"people say that

in Santa Barbara the tap water smells bad,

you know, so maybe

it's true." OK, now we have a debate, right?

An ordinary person

who doesn't know what to think doesn't need

to think that I'm right;

they just need to think that there's a debate,

because so long

as there's a debate, then there's an argument

for staving off

regulation.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: In the fifties,

Hill + Knowlton, PR firm,

designed the strategy to dispel

that nasty little rumor

that tobacco caused

lung cancer--

misinformation

and supporting bogus science

that would call into doubt

the legitimate science.

America's Natural Gas Alliance

hired Hill + Knowlton

in 2009 as their PR firm.

♪

All of a sudden,

ads were everywhere.

They even bought

my name on Google.

Oh, so there it is,

so 60 years later, right,

we have the same PR firm

that actually invented--

John Hill was

the originator of this whole strategy,

so there they are, still

doing the same thing again 56 years later.

Wow. It's--

Wow. Ha ha!

It's depressing,

isn't it? Ha ha!

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Just like the tobacco industry had memos in their drawers

that said all along

that they knew that nicotine was addictive

and tobacco was harmful,

the gas industry also has memos

that show they've known

all along.

Some of them, in fact,

have been published.

Others fell off

"the back of a truck,"

and they'll show you

how they've been trying to solve it for decades

and how they have no way

of completely fixing

or preventing the problem.

Number One, from

Southwestern Energy.

The diagram clearly shows

that the gas well has

a cement barrier around the

sides of it that prevents gas

from lower layers migrating

upwards into aquifers.

But this isn't a PowerPoint

about drilling wells.

This is a PowerPoint about how

cement and casings fail

and allow gas or other

substances to migrate into aquifers.

It's one of their own documents

about how cement fails.

Number Two comes

from Schlumberger--

"Oilfield Review,"

published in 2003--

that showed that sustained

casing pressure,

i.e. cement failure, occurs

at alarming rates.

Their own documents showed

that cement and casings failed

in 5% of wells drilled

immediately upon drilling

and that the failure rate

increased over time;

that over a 30-year period,

50% of wells failed.

Number 3.

This report--leaked out of

a gas industry conference

from Archer,

a well services company--

shows enormous rates of leakage

in the Gulf of Mexico

and the North Sea, and

high rates of what they call

"uncontrolled discharge."

And this PowerPoint slide

from the Society

of Petroleum Engineers

shows that 1.8 million wells

exist in the world

and that 35% of them

are leaking.

It also states that

the industry plans to drill more wells in the next decade

than have been drilled in

the last hundred years.

Recent Pennsylvania

Department of Environmental Protection statistics

back up Schlumberger's

initial findings.

Well leakage was

between 6% and 8.9%

for newly installed wells--

gas migrating into aquifers.

The Pennsylvania Department

of Conservation and Natural Resources

predicts that there will

be 180,000 new gas wells drilled in Pennsylvania.

If 50% of them go bad

over 30 years,

that's 90,000

leaking gas wells.

It's safe to say

there's the potential

for contaminating

the entire state.

Can we ever predict

everything exactly? No.

But we're in much better shape

now than we were generations ago

of predicting probabilistically

the range of events that we expect to see.

Unconventional gas development--

it ain't your

grandmother's gas well.

Longer wells, higher pressures,

higher volumes of frack fluids,

more wells per pad.

We should expect higher risk,

higher accident rate,

and that's what we're seeing.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

For decades, they haven't been able to fix the problem.

There's no way to fix it;

just like tobacco,

they have a problem

that can't be solved.

Just as there's

no safe cigarette,

there's no safe drilling,

and they know it.

Kerosene, benzene,

urea, toluene.

How many of those can I

feed my toddler?

[Audience laughter]

'Cause it's

perfectly safe, right?

It's perfectly safe.

[Cheers and applause]

[Rumbling]

[Australian accent]

Right.

FOX: Oh, my God.

[Distant screaming sound]

FOX: And that's

the water well?

Right.

[All chuckle]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

After drilling had taken place all around Cole Davies' farm,

methane from the coal seam

migrated into the source of his water well.

For 6 months, the pipe

that they pump water out

for cattle started screaming,

as if it had been tapped in

to a well of souls in hell.

[Screaming sounds continue]

FOX: Have you reported this

to the gas company that's around here?

Oh, yeah. They know

all about it.

What do they say?

They know very well all about it.

What do they say to you?

Oh, they just say that

they're not responsible.

Just a natural

occurrence within this area, they said.

Uh-huh.

[Crickets chirping]

[Screaming sound]

Have you had

enough there? [Chuckles]

FOX, VOICE-OVER: Something

about Cole reminded me of American farmers--

soft-spoken, quiet.

He didn't dress up

for the interview,

had no interest whatsoever

in trying to impress us.

AUSTRALIAN MAN: If it's

damaging our water table in Australia,

you know, we're the driest

country in the world.

We've got this artesian

water table underneath us.

I think they're doing

huge risk to it.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Australia wasn't alone.

In April 2010,

the State Department,

under Secretary Hillary Clinton

and the Obama administration,

started the Global

Shale Gas Initiative,

charting shale plays

in over 30 countries

and pledging a government-

to-government engagement

to help develop shale gas

around the world.

So, in a matter

of months, this map

turned into this map.

So you know that now,

and to quote Calvin Tillman, mayor of Dish, Texas,

"Once you know, you can't

not know," right?

[Australian accent]

The first thing they--sorry, the second sentence they said

to me when they came through

that gate was, "If you don't let us come on here

"to search for gas, we will

force our way onto the land.

We will take you to court

and you'll lose."

And I'm just like,

"Pfff! Rightie-o. I'll see you in court."

Wrong group of people.

The people out here are tough, they're gritty.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: I interviewed

farmer after farmer,

rancher after rancher,

all across Australia.

Nobody wanted this,

and just like in the U.S.,

people were being told to move.

[Australian accent]

They've vowed to literally lock the gate

to the big multi-nationals

and are prepared to be arrested if necessary.

[Australian accent]

This is going to be the biggest single ecological impact

that I think we will have seen--

been seen in 150 years.

FOX: And all this happening

is the dawn of renewable energy technology, right?

Well, I describe it

as the last gasp of the fossil fuel era.

And as it goes, it lashes out

and destroys whole regions.

What's really at stake here,

apart from the environment,

and some really strong

environmental values,

is governance itself.

Democratic governance

is at stake here.

♪

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

But it wasn't just Australia that was rebelling.

Protests against shale gas

and fracking broke out across Europe--

in the U.K., in Bulgaria

and Romania,

in the south

of France, in Canada...

[South African

protestors chanting]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

And a country founded on protests--South Africa--

where a huge area of land,

the Karoo, was leased out to Shell.

In America, hundreds

of thousands of letters

and emails, thousands

of citizens testifying

at EPA hearings, DOE hearings,

DEC hearings, DRBC hearings.

♪

And Sean and Yoko went

on "Jimmy Fallon" and sang about it on national TV.

♪ Don't frack my mother ♪

Don't frack me!

Don't frack me!

BOTH: ♪ Please ♪

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

The anti-fracking movement had arrived...

SEAN LENNON AND JIMMY FALLON:

♪ Don't frack my mother ♪

[Cheers and applause]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

And we had a hammer.

The good and bad

are all tangled up in this world,

and you almost

laugh.

You never know what's

going to happen,

and I am convinced

we are gonna stop

this frackin'.

[Cheers and applause]

FOX, VOICE-OVER: But every time

you looked up, fracking was spreading someplace new,

even to Tinsel Town.

♪

Not many people know this,

but there's a thousand-acre

oil field in the center of Los Angeles.

But when oil prices went up

and gas prices went up,

the Baldwin Hills oil field

became viable again.

Fracking rigs for oil were right

in the middle of L.A.

♪

FOX: Where are we,

exactly?

MAN: Baldwin Hills.

Baldwin Hills.

We're smack in the middle

of Los Angeles.

Hollywood's that way,

Beverly Hills is that way.

Venice is behind us.

Right.

And there's talking

about fracking here?

They already are

fracking here.

On the fault line?

All through the fault line.

In fact, in one

of their original

injection wells, which is

the way they're doing it--

There's an

injection well here? Yeah.

In the middle

of L.A.? Oh, yeah.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Fracking the fault line in L.A. sounded more

like a Hollywood plotline

than reality.

That kind of thing just didn't

happen in California.

It happened in places

like Arkansas.

CYNTHIA McFADDEN: In Arkansas,

some geologists think

the disposal of wastewater

from fracking may be leading

to an incredible uptick

in earthquakes,

more than 1,100

since September.

What happens.

[Chuckles]

This is what I think is

happening in this state.

And when something

goes on and the house starts rocking,

then you'll see it

start moving.

Every few minutes, we were

having another quake,

another quake,

another quake.

WOMAN:

You see all this? FOX: Mm-hmm.

And these are all

active wells.

Now, if I

zoom in here on Greenbrier...

Right.

all of these little

orange dots...

Right.

are earthquakes.

This house was literally

just rocking.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Most of the quakes were small, micro-quakes.

FOX: And how often

does this happen? Usually...

Every day.

Every day.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

But then a 4.7 put cracks

in the walls of

the local high school,

popularizing iPhone's

earthquake app

with high-schoolers

and knocked the

earthquake lady's husband out of his La-Z-Boy.

And he's a big man.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: Dirk DeTurck,

a Vietnam veteran,

and his sons' friends,

who are Iraq War veterans,

are having PTSD flashbacks

from the drilling

and earthquakes.

He'd been obsessively

tracking earthquakes on a notepad at home.

DeTURCK:

October up till December.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Looked like he hadn't played pool in months.

DeTURCK:

There's, like, 630

or something like that,

in here, I believe.

[Voice cracking]

And these guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan...

"Sorry if you made it

through that.

Good luck in

your neighborhood."

♪

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

But it wasn't just in Arkansas.

Earthquakes near fracking

and wastewater injection wells

were happening in Ohio,

Oklahoma, Texas.

This is the magnitude-4

earthquake

which occurred very close

to Youngstown, Ohio.

TV NEWSWOMAN:

Before March, there had not been a recorded earthquake.

Since then, there have been 11.

♪

MAN: These earthquakes

were sitting there, waiting to happen.

We have triggered

these earthquakes.

TV NEWSWOMAN: Armbruster

believes the trigger was this Youngstown well

that disposes

of contaminated water.

The water is a by-product of oil

and natural gas extraction

called "fracking."

The disposal well pumps

thousands of gallons of the waste

into rock a mile or more below.

Armbruster says the fluid

may have made its way

into an earthquake fault line.

♪

BRITISH NEWSMAN:

Exploration digging for shale gas deep

in the rocks of Lancashire

has been suspended

after two earthquakes

in two months.

♪

PAINE:

Just behind that truck

are some of the wealthiest

neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

That's Santa Monica,

Beverly Hills, Bel Air,

West L.A.--it's all,

like, there.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: FEMA did

a study of what a 7.2 earthquake

would do to Los Angeles

along the Newport-Inglewood fault line:

thousands of projected

casualties,

trillions of dollars of damage,

comprehensive damage

to buildings,

bridges, and infrastructure.

But the thousand-acre

oil field in Los Angeles

is far from California's

biggest emerging problem...

so I'm going to show you

a little bit here on the map

where most of the produce is

created in California--

the Central Valley,

central California's

agricultural basin.

Dependent on irrigation,

it's the stuff

of American lore--"Land's End,"

the promise of America.

The Central Valley is

over the biggest shale play in the west, the Monterey Shale.

That could mean hundreds of

thousands of oil and gas wells up and down California.

But there's one other thing

that's in American mythology

and American life

that we know really well--

California earthquakes--

and the San Andreas Fault,

probably the most famous fault line in the world,

runs straight through

the Monterey Shale.

♪

I was starting to add it up...

worldwide energy,

choices about where

it was going to come from.

Flying over the United States

on my way home,

seeing the pockmarks of wells

drilled all across

the Rockies...

brought the choices

into high relief,

right out the window

of a commercial flight.

This is what

it really looks like.

♪

July 1st, the year was up...

♪

and Governor Andrew Cuomo

let the moratorium

on drilling and fracking

in New York State expire.

♪

The decision in my backyard

was now in the hands

of Governor Cuomo

and President Obama.

Governor Cuomo announces

that he's going to let science,

not emotion, decide his policy

on hydrofracking.

In the fall of 2011,

he got both--mounting protests across New York

and 67,000 public comments

on their Environmental Impact Statement.

But I was about to find out

that this was much bigger than my backyard.

That fall, Hurricane Irene came

storming up the East Coast.

It was the first time

that I could remember a hurricane

hitting upstate New York

and central Pennsylvania.

The stream swelled to 9 feet

above its normal level.

We lost lots of trees,

but it was nothing

compared to what happened

in upstate New York.

Whole towns washed away.

Hundred-year-old bridges washed

away in the blink of an eye.

A freak storm supercharged

by warming temperatures,

two words on everyone's mind--

climate change.

MAN: I don't think

we live in times

that are particularly kind

to objective information.

Well, the hypothesis here is

shale gas is better for global warming

than other fossil fuels and it's

a good transitional fuel.

So we tested that,

and the answer is, well, no, it's not.

The White House has

clearly bought into this idea

that natural gas is part

of the solution

to moving us gradually

off of fossil fuels.

I don't think they did that

with good science.

We estimate

that somewhere between

3.6% and 7.9% of the total

amount of gas produced

over the lifetime of

a well is emitted to the atmosphere as methane.

There's a continual leakage at

the well head, there's leakage

from the storage

and processing facilities,

purposeful venting,

also accidental leaks.

They throw it into

the pipeline systems and the distribution systems

and storage systems--

there's leakage in all of those.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Global warming is caused by greenhouse gases

emitted from

fossil fuel burning.

When you burn coal,

you get a lot of CO2.

When you burn natural gas,

you get about half as much,

but methane is the second-most

important greenhouse gas,

and it's 105 times more potent

at trapping heat in

the short 20-year timeframe.

Bob Howarth's research shows

when you add up the methane

escaping into the atmosphere,

the fugitive emissions,

and the CO2 from fracked gas,

it makes it the worst fuel

for global warming.

There's only one planet,

you know.

We're doing the experiment

now of how global warming is going to work.

We're sitting in this bowl,

you know, this--we're down here

at the bottom, and the climate

goes back and forth

within some regime,

year by year.

The worry is that,

in warming, it'll switch up

and go over into some

other bowl over here,

and you'll have a dramatically

different planet and that,

once you've switched

from this stable regime

over to there, there's

no easy way to get back.

You don't suddenly start

reducing your greenhouse gas emissions

and go back up

over this hill, back to the way things used to be.

You're over there,

in a new universe.

If you believe that we might be

approaching a tipping point

over the next couple

of decades, then you need to be really careful

about pumping methane--that's

such a potent greenhouse gas

in the short timeframe--

into the atmosphere.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: Frank Finan,

a woodworker near Dimock,

surrounded by gas wells,

bought a FLIR camera--

a camera that can see methane

undetectable to the naked eye.

FOX: When I heard that

for the first time, I said, "Who is this guy?

He bought a FLIR camera?

Is he out of his mind?"

Yeah, I was.

I was out of my mind. [Clears throat]

Things like this

will put you out of your mind.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: He started

to discover what Bob Howarth had calculated--

methane exploding into the air

in huge clouds

out of fracking sites.

FRANK FINAN: And then

it occurred to me it was like Disneyland

compared just to

the world, and now it's not anymore.

For some people,

it still is.

For some people,

we're just a story in the news.

[Scoffs]

You know, I'm a woodworker.

Why does a woodworker

have all this equipment?

So don't tell me

this is not your job. FOX: Yeah.

Step out of your box.

Go where you've never

been before.

Yeah.

The times have changed.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: One night,

I went out with him,

but this time, we didn't need

the FLIR camera.

[Siren blaring]

[Gas hissing]

FINAN: Yeah,

going in the air.

FOX: Huh?

I just don't believe it.

Look through

your window on this side.

It's something,

isn't it?

Whoa! That one--

did you see that one? It just went out.

Shooting methane

up in the air.

[Hissing continues]

MAN: Oh, dude, it's right

behind somebody's house.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: This is

what Bob was talking about...

methane venting straight up

into the atmosphere.

There had to be a better way.

♪

So we did a study looking

at the possibility of powering the entire world

for all purposes

with clean, renewable energy.

And among those that

we considered beside--

was wind, concentrated

solar power,

solar photovoltaics,

geothermal power,

hydroelectric power,

tidal power, and wave power.

And we find that

there's enough wind power in fast wind locations

to power the world

5 to 10 times over.

FOX: Just the wind?

Just the wind.

The red is--the more red

it is, the faster the wind speed.

Wow.

And the more blue, the slower, so you can see

the Great Plains

of the U.S. has a lot of wind resource.

And offshore, the East Coast

has a huge amount of resource, plus it's shallow.

And then we looked at

can we match power demand, or supply with demand,

and found that by bundling

resources together--

because the wind doesn't

always blow and the sun doesn't always shine,

but it turns out, based

on physical laws of nature,

when the wind is not

blowing, the sun is often shining.

And if you take those

two resources and then use

hydroelectric to fill in

the gaps between them,

you can match almost

all supply with demand...

Uh-huh.

in places that have reasonable hydroelectric resources.

FOX: We don't need

to drill for natural gas is what you're saying?

No, we don't need--

there's no need

to drill for gas,

for coal, for oil.

We have sufficient

resources that are clean and renewable.

It's not necessary.

Natural gas is just

not necessary

in solving this problem.

♪

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

It occurred to me that looking at the root of the problem,

I was going to have to try

to investigate something that no one wanted to talk about.

I called all 500-and-change

members of Congress.

15 people answered the call.

We have no energy policy

in the United States

to take us out of

our energy predicament.

What we do in this country,

unfortunately, is lurch

from one golden dream

to another.

So, right now, it looks,

in so many people's minds

on Capitol Hill,

"Well, natural gas.

Oh, that's what we've been

looking for," you know,

"Why didn't we think

of this before?"

All that's getting

across is this new,

large reserve that's going

to be so easy to tap.

The oil companies don't--

on some of these matters, don't even need to lobby.

FOX: Right.

Because it's just...

not questioned.

FOX: ...interested

in hearing about

is the influence of oil

and gas on Congress. Oh, yeah.

Influence? Heh!

Try "ownership." Ha ha ha! Really?

Would you care

to elaborate?

Have we started yet

already? We have started.

Oh, OK. Sorry.

I was just chatting.

In Washington,

I have seen...

committee meeting

after committee meeting

where a great many members

just read the same talking points

that are exactly

the same thing that the industry witnesses are saying.

FOX: People are out there

battling for their homes,

and they're trying

to make their case here in Washington

for the Safe Drinking

Water Act, for the Clean Water Act,

for the Clean Air Act,

the Super Fund Law.

Essentially, they have

a lesser voice, is that what you're saying,

on Capitol Hill,

than the corporations?

I'm saying that corporations

have extraordinary influence in Washington,

more than ever,

and that influence

has been propelled by two

Supreme Court decisions:

"Buckley vs. Valeo,"

and the Citizens United case.

That has given corporations

the chance to influence

elections of members

of Congress directly.

With the new majority

that is here,

is that their decisions

have been informed.

It doesn't have to be

that the oil and gas people

are sitting in the audience

or have been visiting.

The mind is set.

I think that's the concern,

is about whether or not

contributions are

influencing public policy

and where they kind of

disconnect selected officials from common sense.

There have been periods

of our history

when our political system has

been entirely controlled

by a tiny economic elite

who really just run the country for their own benefit.

Exxon could write a check--

I'm not saying they would--

for a billion dollars

if they wanted to.

There's no limit.

And there's no reporting.

They can do that without

the same disclosures

that are required

for other contributors,

and they can do that

in a way that gives you

little opportunity to be

able to defend yourself. FOX: Mm-hmm.

That puts, I think,

all of us at risk.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: ExxonMobil

didn't write a billion-dollar check in one election,

but the fossil fuel industries

combined contributed $150 million

to the 2012 election,

and Common Cause tracked lobbying expenditures--

$747 million to gain and keep

the exemption to the Safe

Drinking Water Act, known as

"the Halliburton loophole

for hydraulic fracturing."

Considering that's

just one election and one exemption to one law,

a billion dollars is

actually the low end.

OK, we got it.

Government's bought off.

Time to go home.

Thank you. Roll credits.

It just didn't seem that simple.

There had to be something else

going on under the surface that I couldn't see.

The price of gas in Asia

right now, depending

on the contract,

can be as much as $16,

whereas it's $2.50 here.

So, if you're in the business

to extract hydrocarbons,

you're going to look for

the customer that's going to pay you the most money.

And that is most decidedly Asia

at the moment, and Europe.

Europe's paying about, what,

$9.50, $10, something like that.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

As of December 5, 2012,

the Federal Energy

Regulatory Commission

had received over

20 applications to build

liquefied natural gas ports

to ship American gas overseas.

The EIA--Energy Information

Administration--reported that, as a result of export,

domestic natural gas prices

would rise by more than 50%,

and that developing

20 LNG ports--

at costs of billions

of dollars each--

made fracking

the U.S. at a large scale a foregone conclusion.

And despite the nationwide shift

towards exporting gas,

the DOE refused to look at

environmental impacts from LNG.

FOX: So what is

happening here?

Well, I think there's

a longer-term thing going on with this.

I personally think

that this is tied to crude oil prices.

This populist argument

that industries used about, you know,

"American gas, by Americans,

for Americans,"

while, in the background,

they're working very hard

to be able to export this gas

out to grow other economies.

It doesn't really play with

the, you know, that populist argument that's been so--

that's worked

so well in this current political environment.

But, you know, again,

is that what we want?

And if we begin to export,

the price of gas is going to move up.

I mean, international

pricing pressures are just going to dictate

that the domestic price

is going to go up.

And wouldn't it be great

for industry

if they get us to be much more

dependent upon natural gas,

and then suddenly

the gas price starts rising?

To me, that's a classic

consumer squeeze,

and we will have done it

to ourselves

and put ourselves

right back in the same boat

that we're in

with crude oil right now.

We'll be much more dependent

upon natural gas, and it will no longer be cheap.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Thousands of miles of pipelines

proposed to connect

shale plays to LNG ports.

Thousands of miles

to connect shale plays

to natural gas-fired

power plants.

WOMAN: Now, what's the...

FOX, VOICE-OVER: Pennsylvania's

woods crisscrossed,

fragmented with clear-cut

swaths of pipeline

that could never be

built upon.

Well these trees

have been here forever, you know?

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Meanwhile, the water buffalo was becoming

the fastest-growing

species in the state.

Duke University released a study

that showed that you were

17 times more likely to have

elevated levels of methane

in your water if you were within

3,000 feet of a gas well.

5,000 environmental violations

across the state,

and in one county, Bradford,

close to a hundred reported

cases of water contamination

in the first year of drilling.

That fall, everyone was moving.

TV NEWSWOMAN:

That's part of the reason why the Hallowich family

that lives about 600 yards from

the fire scene this morning wants to move.

Out of frustration,

they carved the words "GAS LAND" in their yard.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Jeremiah Gee's family moved.

All of Jeremiah's meticulous

documentation sealed away,

the way that Shell had

destroyed 4 generations of being on the same land.

If you ask the family,

they're not allowed to tell you.

Lisa Parr--moved;

dozens of other families--

pushed out;

their court cases settled,

their stories sealed away,

non-disclosure agreements

keeping them silent.

When he was going

into radio silence, Jeremiah sent me a note.

It said, "Matthew 6:20."

I looked it up.

"Do not store for yourselves

treasure on earth.

"Store up for yourselves

treasures in heaven,

"where moths and rust

do not corrupt

"and where thieves do not

break in and steal,

for where your treasure is,

there your heart will be also."

As a storyteller,

there was something inhuman

about forcing people

into silence.

If you take away a person's

home, their connection to where they live,

and you take away their ability

to tell their story,

seems to me you've taken away

two of the most fundamental

things about who they are.

And there was one other person

that was being forced out.

[Vacuum cleaner humming]

Calvin and Tiffiney had

to make a painful decision.

With Clay's asthma

and Josh's nosebleeds, and with Calvin knowing full well--

from the air-monitoring stations

that he had fought to get installed--

exactly what was in

the air in Dish,

they decided

to pick up and leave.

You know things are bad when

the mayor moves out of town.

TILLMAN: This won't do me

any good anymore.

No more free Dish Network.

When we signed up, we're going

to get cable installed,

and it reminded me how much

that stuff actually costs,

so I'm going to miss

free Dish Network.

So these people are

coming out here, spending their life savings on a house,

and then you're stuck.

Nothing you can do.

This is the view where you have

to ask yourself, "My God,

would I really want that

in my backyard?"

Because it's in

this guy's backyard.

He's in litigation with them.

You know, they ruined this guy.

His horses started having

health problems,

started dying, started

having miscarriages;

started having

neurological problems.

Strangely enough,

there's a bunch of neurotoxins in the air.

Funny how that works,

isn't it?

This guy had his house for sale

for years, couldn't sell it.

These people got their house

on the market; they're not going to be able to sell it.

This guy lost

a hundred thousand dollars in property value in his house.

About half of the people

that are on this road right now

just filed suit

against those companies,

so about every other

house, you could say.

I hope that these people...

get enough money

out of their suit

that they can move out of here.

They come in here and they

just got 3 pipelines going

across here, going

in all different directions,

and it's just completely

destroyed this guy's property.

Realistically could have been

a multi-millionaire.

That's just gone.

Just absolutely gone.

So, that house right there,

that 3-story house,

that's my old house.

It's been almost a week.

After we moved out, I drove back

by the house and, you know,

at that point, I knew that,

you know, it's really starting to sink in that this is real

and that...you know,

I'm out of here.

I'm not going

to live here anymore.

You don't know

what this is all about.

You don't know how it feels to

be run out of your house until you're run out of your house,

so...

TILLMAN, VOICE-OVER:

It's with mixed emotions, but it's what I have to do.

You owe it to your kids

to get them out of harm's way,

and it was

the right thing to do,

but it's not always

the easy thing to do.

Yeah, so...

♪

WOMAN: The scale of drilling

has gone up astronomically.

A thousand wells a year

in the Fort Worth Area.

FOX: Your stated position was,

if the states are not doing

their job, EPA will

come in and do it? Absolutely.

Remember,

oil and gas drilling and development is

primarily, in this

country, regulated at the state level.

States like Texas,

states like Wyoming,

states like Pennsylvania

are going to have to step up.

We do have cases where

we believe we see,

many cases,

of groundwater contamination

and drinking-water

contamination that are, if not brought on

entirely by natural

gas production, were exacerbated by it;

not just methane, which is

natural gas, but other contaminants as well.

FOX: So the whole process has

been proven to contaminate, but you can't separate

that one part of the process

from the whole rest of the process?

I can't separate

the part of the process.

That's why we're doing

a two-year study.

So, from that

perspective, we'll have something to say.

In the meantime,

though, citizens should be very vocal

with their local--

heh!--elected officials.

It'll still be up

to Congress to step forward and legislate

to make a law,

to ensure that we do have a national--

FOX: So the real

enforcement is still-- is with the electorate?

It's always with

the--listen, in the environmental movement,

the real power

has always been with the people,

whether that's from

the first Earth Day,

when people got tired

of their air polluted

or their water catching

on fire, all the way up to today.

Inside this beltway,

you often hear people say,

"Well, we should just

get rid of the EPA.

The two don't go

together." Mm-hmm.

And I feel, as head

of the EPA, my job is to do my job:

enforce the Clean Water Act;

enforce the Clean Air Act;

enforce the Safe

Drinking Water Act.

FOX: What can I do

to interact with this agency and say,

"These are the cases

where the states are doing nothing"?

Josh, if you have

concerns, plea--

Let me start again.

Right.

Josh--ha ha!--

if you have concerns, please bring them to us.

Remember, we have said,

and I have said, we are not walking away

from enforcing the law

while this study is going on.

We're going to ensure

that you steward the water resources.

We're going to ensure that

you stew--you take care of the air resources.

We don't want you

to pack up and leave a problem

that we or the taxpayers

are going to have to fix years from now.

[Paper rips]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

When we were leaving the interview, we noticed

that the grand room

that we were in was actually the "Rachel Carson Great Hall."

And then I noticed that just

under the "Rachel Carson" plaque

was a fake plastic plant.

Lisa Jackson, with all

the attacks on the EPA,

had her work cut out for her.

[Truck door closes]

JOHN FENTON: This is

a good time of year to work.

It's kind of brisk and cold

in the morning and it's usually nice and warm in the afternoon,

and this is my favorite time

of year, I think, sometimes.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: 3 years since

the painstaking investigation in Pavillion, Wyoming began,

the EPA was about

to release its results,

but the burden of proof was

weighing everybody down.

FENTON: They said,

"We've moved up the test results date.

"We're going to release it

now on the ninth

of November," which is

day after tomorrow.

To hustle around and move

that test results date up by over a month and a half?

FOX: Mm-hmm.

There's something there.

I'm freaking out

a little bit.

I'll have to be honest

with you. I, uh...

[Sighs]

[Stammers, chuckles]

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Can you imagine waiting 3 years

just to find out

if you had a case?

John, Louis, and the rest

of the Pavillion families--

I was amazed at their endurance.

But from the moment we stepped

in the door, it was clear

the man with the Purple Heart

from Vietnam

was about to cost us

our "G" rating.

It's bullshit.

Somebody better grow

some fucking balls

and know what they're doing.

We're living

in a cesspool out here.

When the DEQ had come out here

and they said, "Well,

"you know, we could talk

Encana, you know, to...

see if they can't sell--

buy you out,"

I said, "Fuck you."

And they said, "Why?"

I said, "Do you think

I'm going to leave all my fucking neighbors here?"

I said, "What kind of asshole

do you think I am?"

I'm so fed up.

The sons of bitches.

FOX: Well, but this

could be the moment where you actually win.

I mean, it's got

to be emotionally driving you insane.

Oh, you're

goddamn right it is.

♪

FOX, VOICE-OVER: Two days

before the EPA results would be released,

we went out to the gas fields

just south of Pavillion.

Wyoming, Colorado, and the west

play host to bands

of wild mustangs,

roaming around on the BLM

and often in conflict with

gas production in the fields.

Well, we turned around.

We're just trying to find

some wild horses.

You guys haven't

seen any, have you?

FOX, VOICE-OVER: The Department

of the Interior rounds up wild horses by helicopter,

pens them in for

relocation, sterilization,

and sometimes they end up in

the slaughterhouse.

The helicopters had been through

the day before.

If there ever was a symbol

of oil and gas production competing with the old ways,

wild horse roundups

would have to be it.

Far in the distance,

up on the ridge...

a single mustang on the plains,

by himself.

Had he escaped?

I'm always--have kind of

a knot in my stomach before these go.

Once it gets going,

it seems to--I forget about it pretty quick.

Uh...it's a--

you never know what

you're going to hear.

WOMAN OFFICIAL:

The drinking water well results.

We did find methane

in 10 of the 28 wells.

They were isotopically

very similar to the gas

from the production

reservoir.

We found synthetic

organic compounds,

including a couple

of gycols,

some alcohols,

and 2-butoxyethanol.

We found several

petroleum-related compounds,

including benzene

at 50 times the safe number

for maximum

contaminant level.

We also found diesel

and gasoline range organics on a fairly widespread basis.

[Applause]

FENTON:

Benzene, 50 times--

50 times the maximum

contaminant level

on benzene in

the monitoring wells.

That's insane.

That's a mad amount

of pollution.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: The case

in Pavillion was the shot heard around the world.

It sounds almost absurd,

but it was the first time EPA verified

fracking chemicals were in

the water because of fracking.

And Lisa Jackson

made good on her word:

EPA moved into Dimock,

announced a full round

of testing of 60 homes,

and began delivering water

to residents that were affected.

MAN: Whoo-whoo! Whoo!

[Truck horn honks]

This is the day.

This is the day of vindication, right?

FOX: It's huge, isn't it?

SCOTT ELY: Yes, it is.

You know, it's a little

overwhelming, too. FOX: It is amazing.

I think we should be baptized

with this EPA water.

I haven't been baptized

for a really long time, but I'm ready to be baptized.

FOX: You want to get

in the water? ELY: Good. How you doing?

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

For the first time in a long time,

in Dimock, there was hope.

And then the election started.

Obama's State of the Union

address was largely seen

as the first campaign

speech of the cycle.

BARACK OBAMA:

This country needs an all-out, all-of-the-above strategy

that develops every available

source of American energy.

[Cheers and applause]

OBAMA: We have a supply

of natural gas

that can last America

nearly 100 years,

and my administration will take

every possible action to safely develop this energy

because America will

develop this resource

without putting the health and

safety of our citizens at risk.

And, by the way,

it was public research dollars

over the course of 30 years that

helped develop the technologies

to extract all this natural gas

out of shale rock.

Thank you, God bless you,

and God bless the United States of America.

[Whistles and applause]

FOX, VOICE-OVER: It was a major

election-year shift in policy.

When policy shifts,

investigations shift, too.

But we were about to find out

just how many steps could get taken backwards,

and just how much science

could get swept aside.

When the first test results

came back to Dimock,

the residents called me,

feeling vindicated.

But the tests weren't released

to the public; I had to drive out there and get them myself.

Of the 6 tests that I

could get, all 6 wells

had significant levels of both

ethane and methane;

3 of 6 wells had volatile

organic compounds;

4 of 6 wells contained

polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons,

including benzo(a)pyrene,

benzo(GHI)perylene,

dibenzofuran, dinitrotoluene,

pyrene, and hexachlorobenzene,

explosive levels of methane,

and a host of contaminants,

including uranium,

associated with drilling.

And then EPA released

a desk statement to the press,

saying Dimock's water was safe.

It was deja vu

all over again.

...in Dimock

is at the center of a national focus

on natural gas

drilling's impact on drinking water.

The EPA's first ruling

is that the water

at those homes is

safe to drink.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

Without the tests being released to the public,

the media ran with the headline

"Dimock's water was safe."

FOX:

ELY:

FOX:

ELY:

FOX:

ELY:

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

When a federal agency changes course,

it happens all across

the nation.

Just two weeks later,

the Imminent and Substantial Endangerment Order

against Range Resources

in Texas was lifted.

The Lipsky case was dropped.

The press was told

the case was settled,

but there was no settlement

for the Lipsky family.

Their water was

still flammable,

no arrangement for

water replacement was made,

and a pipe replaced the

garden hose off the head space of their water well

which spewed a flame

3 feet high.

Steve and Shyla Lipsky were

dragged through the media

in a smear report from Fox News.

And the campaign against

Al Armendariz finally succeeded;

he resigned under pressure.

With all this back and forth,

I asked retiring Congressman Maurice Hinchey,

who had originally asked EPA

to get involved, who was the sponsor

of the "Frack Act" in Congress,

what he thought was going on.

My thought is that

there are--heh heh!--

a certain amount of contests

within the Obama Administration.

There are people within

the Administration who have differences of opinion.

Some understand that, uh,

the way in which this

frack drilling operation has taken place

and is taking place right now,

is being injurious

and is costing a lot

of money, is being harmful.

And there are others

who are very much in favor

of what this situation

should be continued.

We have to find out if it's

safe for us to be here. FOX: Right.

But we also have

to find out what happened

so that we can stop it

from happening again,

because people complain

about the price of gas;

wait till you're paying

twice that for water.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: What was

more troubling was that both Scott Ely in Pennsylvania

and Steve Lipsky in Texas

were saying the same thing--

mid-level EPA would come

to their door and tell them,

"We're sorry. We're being

yanked off the case.

Higher-ups are telling us

we've got to walk out on this."

It didn't make

any sense. Again--

Well, again, I got people

from inside the EPA,

'cause I don't want to get

anyone in trouble 'cause there's good people there,

I think, and said

that higher-up just yanked it away from them.

The Philadelphia office got

a call from the higher-ups from D.C., chewing them out.

He said that, uh,

that it wasn't just Range Resources,

the gas company came

after them, it was the whole coalition.

But it was from

the higher-ups, and they said there was some congressmen

that were calling, you know,

and when they first come in here,

there was congressmen

that were really harassing EPA:

"Why are you there?

Get out of there. You don't belong there."

And it's kind of scary

when your own government

is afraid of a business.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

"Don't use your water. It's not safe.

We can't do anything about it.

Orders are coming from above."

Ready to move.

FOX: You ready to move?

Yeah. I just--

Yeah?

It's...

FOX: You'd really walk out

on this if you had to-- I guess you have to, right?

Yeah.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

As it turns out, neither Steve Lipsky

nor Barack Obama was

compelled to move.

Steve Lipsky didn't give up.

He kept pressing reporters

to look into the case,

and just after the election,

all sorts of things turned up.

It turned up that EPA had done

a full hydrogeological study

of the gas drilling

near Steve Lipsky's house,

showing a fingerprint

match between the gas in Range Resources' gas well

and the gas in

Steve Lipsky's water well.

So the EPA knew the whole time.

A letter from the

Texas Regulatory Agency to Range Resources,

stating that their cement job

had failed.

So the gas company knew

the whole time.

An email that revealed

that former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell

had actually lobbied the EPA

on behalf of Range Resources

to drop the case.

Just a few weeks after

the election, Lisa Jackson,

EPA Administrator

and lead investigator

on fracking across

the U.S., resigned.

Scott Ely hung on in Dimock,

continuing his lawsuit,

and New Yorkers didn't

give up, either.

Citizens submitted

204,000 public comments

on the last stage of the

Environmental Impact Statement,

forcing Governor Cuomo

to halt the process

and continue the de facto

moratorium.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

But for the rest of the Dimock families,

when EPA's press release seemed

to destroy their case,

their lawyers turned around

on them, saying, "You've got to settle with Cabot

"and you have to sign

non-disclosure agreements

or else we're coming

after you for our expenses,"

which the residents could

in no way afford.

So, in just the matter

of a year and a half,

the Dimock case

had exploded in the media, been reported worldwide,

had set the stage

for a precedent for water replacement

throughout PA and throughout

the world that could have cost

the gas industry trillions

of dollars to fulfill,

to being shoved in the corner,

denied the truth by the federal government, the gas industry,

and the state, and told to take

the money, shut up, and go away.

The residents started

preparing for silence.

FOX: As a last question,

if you're in a position

where Cabot would do nothing,

except if you guys signed

an agreement that said you couldn't speak anymore,

what would you like

your last statement to be?

Well, knowing me as well

as you do, and a lot of people know me,

that it's like I almost

never...stop talking.

Ha ha ha ha!

Oh, my husband says,

"You wake up talking."

And I do. I do.

You know,

I'm a communicator.

I've given this my all, Josh.

I've given this 200%.

FOX: So, there isn't one

final sentence, statement?

[Alarm beeps]

See? I'm practicing.

[Beep]

FOX, VOICE-OVER: A few weeks

after returning home from Wyoming,

a disturbing hearing was

announced in the House of Representatives.

The House Committee

on Science and Technology

was hauling EPA in

before a panel

to question their results

in Pavillion.

Clearly, it was another attack.

If Congress was going

to attack EPA in the last remaining investigation,

someone needed to be there

to tell the story.

But Representative Andy Harris,

Republican Chair of the Committee,

was barring our cameras

from the proceedings.

FOX: I just have to stay calm.

If I start getting nervous, I'm

going to say the wrong thing.

I just have to stay calm.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: There's

a protocol in Congress that if you want to tape a hearing,

you have to sign up

and register; we followed the protocol, we signed up.

We knew the rules--if someone

was speaking in public, that meant they could be recorded,

and the First Amendment states,

"Congress shall make no law

impeding the freedom

of the press."

That meant, to me,

that no matter which representative told me

that I couldn't come in

that day, the Constitution guaranteed my rights.

FOX: Has press

already gone in?

There's no press covering.

No credentialed media

signed up to cover the hearing. Uh-huh.

FOX, VOICE-OVER: Of course,

I knew what might happen. I didn't think it would.

I thought they would

actually cave and realize

that we were on the right side

of the First Amendment.

But I have to say

I wasn't surprised.

WOMAN: Sir, you are not

allowed in with a camera.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:

It had been demonstrated to me over and over again

that certain elements

within Congress and the gas industry

had gotten used to treating

the Constitution just as they had treated the fossil fuels

they extracted, as a relic

left behind from the past that they had every right to burn.

WOMAN: You cannot

have that in here.

FOX: Of course we can.

It's a public meeting. No, you cannot.

There's an appeal

to the Chair.

Several of the members are

going to make a statement.

Sir.

And we are allowed to be here, within our rights.

Are you going

to remove your camera?

I--I am not going

to remove the camera.

Sir, sir, stop.

FOX: We have

also sent emails.

We have also sent emails

and we have talked. Yes.

Do your duty,

Officer. All right.

Sir, turn around,

put your hands behind your back for me, please.

MAN: Come on, come on.

Come on, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chair, we discussed

this before.

Ahem. This is

a public hearing.

This is a public

hearing.

I'm within my First

Amendment rights,

and I am being

taken out.

MAN: Well, but before

the meeting has begun,

before we've had a chance to

discuss the issues, this guy is being led out in handcuffs.

WOMAN: Where's the transparency?

FOX, VOICE-OVER: They led me out

of the hearing room.

I was told I was the first

journalist to be arrested

in Congress simply

for doing journalism,

but we really wanted

to tape the hearing.

We really wanted to hear

what they had to say.

The great irony is that

after taping 3 1/2 years of hearings

all across the nation,

in big places and small,

the last thing I ever want

to do ever again

is tape a goddamn hearing.

You got to stand on your feet

the whole time,

most of what's said is

pretty boring.

It's a pretty arduous deal.

When they led me out

in handcuffs, I was half-relieved

that I didn't have to keep

standing there listening to these people.

I felt calm. I felt relaxed.

I felt free.

I didn't have to answer

my phone, return a text message,

make sure that the camera wasn't

running out of batteries.

I didn't have to listen to what

these people were saying,

attacking my friends

in Pavillion, Wyoming,

attacking the EPA once more.

I had done everything I needed

to do at that moment.

There wasn't any more.

After 3 1/2 years of recording,

documenting, writing notes,

traveling all over the world,

this was the most

that I could do.

When I was in

the police station,

my arresting officer hit me up

for a part in my next movie

as he was leading me over

to the fingerprint machine.

When they pressed my fingers

down on the glass,

and I saw the images

up on the screen--

the ridges, the circles

on my fingertips--

I realized

they looked just like

the inside of a tree.

Maybe there's something deep

in our DNA that doesn't want to get cut down.

Maybe there's something linked.

At least that's what I feel.

A tree doesn't move

until you cut it down,

and I'm certainly...not moving.

We can't all just move,

certainly not when there's

another way out.

I felt like I could see it--

a horizontal well bore

drilled down into the earth,

snaking underneath the Congress,

shooting money up

through the chamber at such high pressure

that it blew the top off

of our democracy,

another layer of contamination

due to fracking;

not the water, not the air,

but our government--all

those toxic dollars,

all those contaminants,

all of that influence

out-sizing the citizen's voice

in our democratic republic.

So I still don't know what's

going to happen around here.

The saying goes,

"Environmentalists only ever get temporary victories."

But the losses are

always permanent.

There's no such thing

as anyone's backyard anymore.

This wasn't about me

getting drilled

or anyone getting drilled

in any one place.

The plan is for shale gas

to be the new world energy.

If they get their way,

we're in for 50 years

of shale gas running the world.

You start to get dizzy.

I felt like I could

close my eyes

and open them anywhere

in the world.

♪

♪