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.

♪

♪