Fracking+(Con)

//By Josh Fox// In April 2009, I was standing in Amee Ellsworth's kitchen in Weld County, Colo., an area that was being drilled for natural gas. She was making sandwiches for me and my film crew and explaining how she had been showering in the dark for months, afraid that a spark from the overhead light bulb in her bathroom would light her water on fire and blow up her house. She could light her tap water on fire right out of the kitchen sink. The cause of what she described as "sheer terror" was hydraulic fracture-drilling, or fracking, for natural gas.
 * Ban Fracking Now **

America is waking up to the slowly unfolding disaster of fracking, and not a second too soon. The controversial drilling practice, which has transformed gas drilling in the U.S. and abroad, is used to extract natural gas from rock formations by injecting huge amounts of water mixed with toxic and carcinogenic chemicals at such high pressures that it actually cracks apart underground formations.

The problem is that everywhere the gas drilling industry goes, a trail of water contamination, air pollution, health concerns and betrayal of basic American civic and community values follows. And with drilling happening in large swaths of residential and public lands in 34 states, a movement against fracking has sprung up in its wake.

I have spent the past three years investigating fracking for natural gas, and some of that journey can be seen in my Oscar-nominated film Gasland. Everyday the facts of fracking become clearer. The process is inherently contaminating, and no amount of regulation can make it safe for people living near or downriver from it. Chemicals used in the fracking fluid are turning up in groundwater in drilling areas from Colorado to Pennsylvania.

To drill a gas well, you have to drill through the water table. The industry claims that layers of concrete well casing ensure that no toxic chemicals or flammable methane gas can enter the aquifers we depend upon for safe drinking water. However, a rudimentary search of the data will tell you that one in 20 wells suffers an immediate failure of the concrete casing. The failure rate of casings (and of other parts of the well structure) only grows with age.

Methane and chemicals from the drilling process can be found in water wells near drilling all over the map, causing the remarkable phenomenon of water so contaminated that it actually catches fire at the kitchen tap. The more they drill, the more our drinking water becomes irreparably harmed. There is no easy way to clean an aquifer once it has been contaminated.

This is not an industry that will reform itself based on small regulatory steps. This is not an industry that can police itself or be counted on to protect public health. Neither states nor the federal government have the resources to enforce regulations when the industry shows no remorse, culpability or willingness to cooperate.

This is the wrong road forward for America. We cannot live in the growing gas lands. We should be investing in renewable energy technology that can provide America with energy as cheaply and far more safely than fracking.

I have heard stories like Amee Ellsworth's thousands of times, in county after county, in state after state. The profound suffering of people like her not only should not be allowed to continue, it is an outrage that it is happening in America. Let's continue to lead the world, and ban fracking now.