tagged w/ josh fox
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Environmentalists are setting their sights on a small village in northeastern Pennsylvania and the impact hydraulic fracturing has had on the town.
Dimock, Pennsylvania, close to an hour's drive north of Scranton, is home to 11 families who received daily water deliveries for nearly three years, courtesy of Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. State regulators cited Cabot for drilling natural gas wells that allowed methane to enter the local ground water, according to the Associated Press.
Yet Cabot has insisted that the town's water is safe to drink, and a judge from the state's Environmental Hearing Board allowed Cabot to stop paying for water deliveries last week.
In response to the decision, several groups have stepped forward to show support for the residents of Dimock whose water has allegedly been affected. According to the NRDC, the city of Binghamton, New York has sent a tanker of water to the village. Due to "foot dragging" by Dimock township, however, Binghamton was not able to pay for the water and costs were covered by the Sierra Club.
A second shipment of water was delivered Tuesday by individuals traveling from New York City, including actor Mark Ruffalo and filmmaker Josh Fox ("Gasland").
Activists first gathered at New York's City Hall in Manhattan to call on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to visit Dimock and reject fracking In New York state, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Tuesday's delivery included water from New York City's watershed, a source that activists say is threatened by the prospects of fracking. A meeting to decide on the future of natural gas drilling in the Delaware River Basin (which supplies water to New York City and Philadelphia) was recently delayed, extending the current moratorium on fracking.
The EPA recently told Dimock residents that drinking their water poses "no immediate health threat," reports The Scranton Times-Tribune.
Others aren't so convinced. The NRDC announced that it will be joining in a lawsuit on behalf of the families impacted by fracking in Dimock. Kate Sindling, a senior attorney at NRDC said in a statement:
This is about standing up to the government when it abandons its people. It's about defending the basic human right of access to clean water. These are American citizens who are so desperate for clean water that they’re pumping the water out of ponds and mixing it with bleach because they believe it's safer than what's coming out of their tap. We cannot allow this to happen here -- America is supposed to do better.
Photo:
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Article continues at link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/06/dimock-pennsylvania-fracking-water-_n_1131805.html#s524154Environmentalists are setting their sights on a small village in northeastern... more
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Help bring emergency aid to Dimock: http://j.mp/4dimock
On November 30th, 2011 the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will allow Cabot Oil and Gas co. to halt delivery of water to families in Dimock, leaving them with only the toxic, flammable water that has made them ill and caused skin lesions.
The time has come to take action to support our friends in Dimock. Cabot Oil and Gas, and the Pennsylvania DEP are neglecting their responsibility to aid the people whose lives they damaged. Tell Pennsylvania Governor Corbett he made the wrong choice, effectively selling out his constituents and allowing a travesty of justice to take place on his watch.
Please sign our petition: http://j.mp/rGorpS, and take a minute to call the Secretary of the Pennsylvania DEP, Michael Krancer, at 717-787-2814 and tell him to reverse the DEP decision and force Cabot to continue delivering water to the families in Dimock. You can also call Scott Perry of the DEP here: 717-576-7613 and call Governor Corbett here: 717-787-2500.
For more info go to: www.waterdefense.orgHelp bring emergency aid to Dimock: http://j.mp/4dimock
On November 30th, 2011 the... more
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Gasland director Josh Fox put in a winning appearance at Occupy Wall Street on Sunday 23rd October as he performed a banjo version of Material Girl along with Rufus Wainwright and Sean Lennon among others.
The anti-fracking campaigner turned up in support of the Occupy protest and spoke about the hydraulic fracturing developments in Delaware and New York State.
Fox urged protesters to join him at the Delaware River Basin Commission on November 21st to demonstrate their opposition to plans to allow fracking in the area.
“Make your voice known that you want to stop fracking here and now,” was his rallying cry.
Accompanied as always by his banjo, Josh Fox went on to perform Madonna’s 1985 single Material Girl to the crowd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgwM5AkK7HEGasland director Josh Fox put in a winning appearance at Occupy Wall Street on Sunday... more
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On the 6th of August anti-fracking campaigners climbed 500 feet to hang two banners from Blackpool Tower to raise awareness of their fears over the controversial gas extraction method.
The Blackpool Tower is five miles east of the first fracking test well in the UK operated by Cuadrilla Resources.
We spoke to Philippa De Boissiere, one of the 'Frack Off' representatives who was there on the day, about why they don't want fracking to take place in the UK.On the 6th of August anti-fracking campaigners climbed 500 feet to hang two banners... more
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If you haven't heard about "fracking" you need to listen up right now, because it's very likely to come to a town near you!
Hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – is a process used by gas companies to extract natural gas trapped inside hard shale rocks deep inside the earth by flushing it out using water.
Why is this a bad thing we hear you ask…well have a look at the trailer for the Oscar nominated documentary Gasland and you will understand why fracking in the UK is something we all should be concerned about.
Not only can the water used to flush out the gas from the shale rocks be poisonous for you and the environment - it can ignite!
Exploration companies claim there is a potential £70bn of gas reserves in rocks deep under south Wales, they have already started franking in Blackpool and there are applications in process for fracking sites all over the UK and Europe.
If you haven't heard about "fracking" you need to listen... more
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The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a "Saudia Arabia of natural gas" just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part exposé, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.
Gasland, one of the 50 Documentaries To See Before You Die
Current TV (Sky 183, Virgin 155)The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United... more
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Please read up on fracking!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html?_r=1&hp
The link to today's NYT article, "Regulation lax as gas wells' tainted water hits rivers" is a good start with great visual aids.
The Josh Fox documentary(available @Netflix), "Gasland", nominated for an Academy award, is another good place to learn more about fracking.
Cheney made sure that the gas industry is not regulated! No one can even formally complain about it! And guess what company is involved with the drilling!
Our water supplies are in peril anyway - why let corporate gas ruin what we have left?Please read up on fracking!... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
The natural gas industry is afraid that Josh Fox, director of the muckraking film Gasland, might win an Oscar on Sunday. Earlier this month, an organization called Energy in Depth, backed by the oil and gas industry, sent the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a letter in which it argued that Gasland, Fox’s exposé on the natural gas industry, should be removed from consideration for best documentary feature because it contained inaccurate information.
After dealing with the industry for the past couple of years, Fox is not surprised by this tactic. “What this points to is the culture of that industry, which is bullying, which is aggressive, which is outlandish in their tactics, which will stop at nothing,” he told AlterNet.
The film is still up for consideration, and the industry should be worried about the impact its nomination, let alone a victory, could have. Even if the film doesn’t win on Sunday, millions of viewers will see a clip of the film that documents the real threat of environmental devastation that comes along with natural gas drilling and, in particular, with hydrofracking.
Nothing natural about it
The Media Consortium’s Weekly Mulch has been tracking the fight over natural gas drilling. As noted back in September, Sandra Steingraber, in Orion Magazine, has called the rise of hydrofracking “the environmental issue of our time.” In a more recent dispatch for the magazine, Steingraber reports from an Environmental Protection Agency hearing on fracking, a technique for extracting otherwise hard-to-reach gas from the ground.
In upstate New York, where the hearing was held and where natural gas companies have been buying up drilling rights and properties for the past couple of years, residents are hugely concerned about this issue: four hundred people signed up to speak, for 120 seconds each, as Steingraber reports, over two days. One speaker in particular stuck out to her, though:
An older man rose to speak….And then he let ten seconds of silence fill the theater….After hours of ceaseless, rapid-fire speech, the sudden hush flowed through the overheated room like cool water. Someone giggled nervously. And then, finally, he spoke. That silence, he announced, represented the sounds of migratory birds. And tourists. And professors. And organic farmers. And thus with no words at all he reminded the audience of all the good members of our beloved community who would — if our land filled up with drill rigs, waste ponds, compressor stations, and diesel trucks — disappear, exit the cycle. As in, forever.
At Change.org, Austin Billings has another account of what natural gas drilling is putting at risk—the Bridger-Teton National Forest, miles of “spectacular hills and tall pine forests” that, Billings writes, “just kept going” as he drove through them. A company called Plains Exploration and Production Company is working to sink more than 130 natural gas wells in this area, Billings reports, a project that will strew the area with “pipelines, compressor stations, industrial water wells, truck staging areas, and other industrial features.”
Push Back
If Josh Fox wins an Oscar, however, natural gas projects like this one will face even more opposition. And that opposition matters. Just ask Costco, which caved in this week to a Greenpeace-led campaign against its sales of unsustainable seafood. For months, Greenpeace and its allies have been pushing the chain of wholesale grocery stores to sell only fish that can be captured or farmed in a sustainable way. The chain agreed to remove 12 “red list” species, at the highest risk for extinction, and to take other actions to promote sustainability and ocean conservation.
“It was a long and arduous process,” said Casson Trenor, Greenpeace’s seafood campaigner, said, according to Change.org’s Sarah Parsons. “I’m really happy with where we’ve gotten to, and I think it says a lot about our methods and how effective we can be.”
Guilty pleasures
Of course, fish is not the only food that’s damaging to the environment. So much of what’s available to eat is damaging to the environment. Grist reported last week that Girl Scout cookies are made with palm oil, the production of which is driving deforestation in Indonesia. Earth Island Journal’s Maureen Nandini Mitra follows up by pointing out that Thin Mints aren’t the only sweet that sucks up palm oil: her list includes M&Ms, Snickers, and Twix, as well as Clif energy bars.
Another point against those treats: They usually don’t come in recyclable packaging. On the other hand, it’s a little bit of a mystery what happens to the recyclable containers tossed into the recycling, especially those with a little food gunk left on them. For those worried about their fate, Mother Jones’ Kiera Butler has done a substantial public service by ferreting the best approaching to cleaning out recyclables. The takeaway: They can be a little bit dirty. ”It’s not a giant deal if containers have little food residue on them,” Butler reports, but “the cleaner your containers, the more they’re worth on the recyclables market.”
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outletsby Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
The natural gas industry is afraid that... more
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
BP oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months, and while attention has focused there, deepwater oil drilling is just one of many risky methods of energy extraction that industry is pursuing. Gasland, Josh Fox’s documentary about the effects of hydrofracking, a new technique for extracting natural gas, was broadcast this week on HBO. In the film, Fox travels across the country visiting families whose water has turned toxic since gas companies began drilling in their area.
“So many people were quick to respond to our requests to be interviewed about fracking that I could tell instantly that this was a national problem—and nobody had really talked enough about it,” Fox told The Nation this week.
Natural gas
In Washington, even green groups like the Sierra Club have been pushing natural gas as a clean alternative to fuels like coal; reports like Fox’s suggest that the environmental costs of obtaining that gas are not yet clear. Besides water contamination, natural gas opponents are also documenting environmental damage to air quality. Like the problems with deepwater oil drilling, which became apparent after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, the dangers of hydrofracking could go unchecked until disaster strikes.
And both deepwater drilling and hydrofracking are symptoms of the greater crisis threatening the country: as energy resources become harder to extract, energy companies are taking greater risks to get at the valuable fuels.
Drilling on government land
As Fox documents, new gas wells are popping up like gopher holes all over the country, on private and public lands. Just this week, Earthjustice, an environmental advocacy law group, challenged the Bureau of Land Management’s decision to allow drilling in a southwestern Colorado mountain range, the Colorado Independent reports.
“The HD Mountains are the last tiny, little corner of the San Juan Basin not yet drilled for natural gas development,” Jim Fitzgerald, a farmer, told Earthjustice. “This whole area depends on the HD Mountains watersheds. Drilling could have disastrous effects upon them.”
From coast to coast
Coloradans are not the only ones pushing back against drilling. In The Nation, Kara Cusolito writes about the problems Dimock, PA, has faced:
After a stray drill bit banged four wells in 2008…weird things started happening to people’s water: some flushed black, some orange, some turned bubbly. One well exploded, the result of methane migration, and residents say elevated metal and toluene levels have ruined twelve others. Then, in September 2009, about 8,000 gallons of hazardous drilling fluids spilled into nearby fields and creeks.
After that second incident, fifteen families began a lawsuit against Cabot Oil and Gas, the gas company that’s dominating that area. In The American Prospect, Alex Halperin wrote a couple of months back about efforts to fight back against natural gas drilling in Ithaca, NY.
Regulation
One of the problems with hydrofracking is that it’s poorly regulated right now. No one except the natural gas companies know what goes into the “fracking fluid” that they pour into wells to help bubble the gas up to the surface. A loophole in the Safe Water Drinking Act also exempted the practice from regulation.
That situation could be changing, however. As Amy Westervelt writes at Earth Island Journal:
“Thanks in large part to the work done by a handful of journalists and angry residents over the past couple of years, the EPA is finally looking into fracking more seriously. In fact, they’re looking into it so comprehensively the energy companies are getting worried. It’s worth noting here that all the big oil guys have a big stake in natural gas drilling, and many of them have contractual loopholes with the smaller companies that own the gas drilling leases that if fracking is taken off the table as a legitimate drilling process, they’re out.”
Like deepwater oil drilling, fracking is a relatively new endeavor, the risks of which are not fully understood. Unlike that type of drilling, though, the opportunity still exists to create a framework in which the companies will have some accountability to the environments and communities that they threaten.
Future present
Besides regulating the industries who are providing energy now, the environmental community needs to keep pressing towards a future where the country does not depend on fossil fuels like oil and gas to run our world. This week, at the U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, thousands of people are considering how to fight against problems like these.
Ahmina Maxey, for instance, is a member of the Zero Waste Detroit Coalition. “We are planning, next Saturday, the Clean Air, Good Jobs, Justice march to the incinerator to demand that the city of Detroit clean up its air,” she told Democracy Now!
Green Detroit
As Elizabeth DiNovella writes for The Progressive, Detroit is working towards green solutions to some of its problems. DiNovella reports:
“Detroit’s population has shrunk to about a quarter of what it was forty or fifty years ago, leaving lots of open green space. But neighborhood groups are transforming these vacant lots into community gardens. Seven years ago there were 8o community gardens, consisting of neighborhood gardens, backyard patches, and school gardens. By 2009, there were 800 community gardens. This year there are 1200, including some urban farms.”
“As far as I’m concerned, Detroit is ground zero for the sustainability movement,” writes Ron Williams for Free Speech TV. He explains:
“What we need now is a collaborative effort that could echo around the world. An Urban Green Lab. What possible better stage than the 11th largest city in the United States which is experiencing Depression-level economic conditions? Let’s take sustainability home. Collectively we have everything the people of Detroit need to build their city anew. Their solutions are likely to be the very same solutions every community will need in some form in the years ahead.”
Here’s hoping ideas like this take root.By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
BP oil has been spilling into the Gulf of... more
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Will natural gas solve our energy problems? The oil and gas industry has been making their case that natural gas is a clean alternative to fossil fuels, that it will reduce our dependency on foreign oil, and create jobs. What the industry doesn’t mention is the highly controversial practice required to extract the oil known as hydraulic fracturing.
Today, filmmaker Josh Fox, Earth Justice Senior Attorney Deborah Goldberg, Sabrina Artel, Host and Producer of Trailertalk, and Natural Resources Defense Council Attorney Kate Sinding on why hydraulic fracturing poses a real threat to water supplies in the United States and the New York city watershed in particular.Will natural gas solve our energy problems? The oil and gas industry has been making... more
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