Film takes anti-drilling position

MIRIAM AMIE Times Leader Correspondent

The rush to cash in on the growing gas boom has brought big drillers, service contractors, international energy conglomerates, environmentalists, politicians, journalists and a host of others to Pennsylvania.

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It also has put independent filmmaker – now anti-drilling icon – Josh Fox in the limelight.

Fox, 38, is the creator of the provocative film “Gasland,” set for nationwide release this fall.

In making the film, Fox mounted an intense nationwide campaign aimed at bringing together people and communities that are claiming catastrophic suffering related to natural gas drilling. Fox met scores of people along the way who said they became ill because of nearby gas well emissions on their property, witnessed tainted water that was killing wildlife or in other ways felt their lives were damaged by the quest for subterranean gas.

In a phone interview as he was driving from New Mexico to Arkansas, where he was scheduled to attend a screening of “Gasland,” Fox told The Times Leader that he intends to continue the campaign until legislation on gas drilling is strengthened.

He has, no doubt, raised the ire of big gas business and many politicians by documenting the potentially serious problems associated with gas development. The main danger is contamination of groundwater during the extraction process. Some people blame the process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a drilling technique in which millions of gallons of a mixture of water, chemicals and sand is blasted underground to break up shale and release the natural gas.

People in the gas extraction business say fracking itself has never been proven to be a cause of water contamination.

Fox calls the process “violent.”

Wants a one-year moratorium

Some of the biggest names in the energy industry have been pouring into Pennsylvania to snap up lease agreements from landowners to develop the gas rich Marcellus Shale formation, which also stretches through New York, Ohio, and West Virginia. Concerns about the toxic effects of the controversial drilling technique prompted New York to enforce a one-year moratorium on gas development, so it could be researched in depth.

Fox, a native Pennsylvanian from Milanville and graduate of Columbia University, wants his home state to adopt a similar moratorium. Two years ago gas developers approached him with $100,000 cash incentive leasing bonus so they could drill on his family’s verdant 19.5 acre property close to the New York border. But after talking to people in neighboring counties who said their drinking water wells had become contaminated after drilling, Fox declined.

He then began an investigative journey that led to making “Gasland” and his current campaign lobbying to get laws changed or halt gas drilling all together – in exchange for renewable energy policy.

Fox spoke bluntly about his fears about the prospect of gas drillers spoiling the pristine landscape of his Wayne County home. His worst moment, he said, was when he felt powerless, when he had first heard about lease offers, and did not know what to do. “I felt very cornered,” he admitted. “Then I started to get very active about it. To be honest, though, I’d much rather be out there talking (gas drilling) than sitting at home freaking out,” he said reflecting on how “Gasland” took shape.

“Once you have contaminated an aquifer, there is no going back. You can’t fix it. What Pennsylvania is in the process of doing is trading the future of its water supply for a few short years of energy. It’s not even really about the energy; it’s about these (gas) companies’ profits – and being unwilling to abide the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Superfund (Act). It only has to do with their profits,” he said.

In his commitment to educate Americans about the dangers of gas drilling, Fox has crossed the country 13 times since the Sundance Film Festival awarded his movie a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize in January. He hopes to attend a Wilkes-Barre screening of “Gasland” soon.

Disclosure of toxic chemicals

Scores of toxic chemicals, many undisclosed by the industry, are used to “frack” a well. They can include known carcinogens such as benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene. Ceramic balls and sand are also pumped in with the fracking fluid. Methane and hydrogen sulfate, which are released in fracking, are known air contaminates at sites. Currently the industry is under pressure to disclose fracking chemicals. Companies such as the Dallas-based Chief Oil & Gas and Range Resources of Fort Worth, Texas, have touted their recent voluntary disclosures, or intentions to disclose, chemicals they were using to frack Marcellus Shale.

Because the Energy Policy Act of 2005 championed by then-Vice President Dick Cheney exempted hydraulic fracturing from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, shale gas drillers don’t have to disclose what chemicals they use.

Fox wants this changed.

He described fracking as “like an earthquake.” “The earth shakes beneath you, and that’s very disturbing; but, the worst things I have seen are streams that are contaminated and water that smells like turpentine. The people have to live in this, and they have no choice. They are showering in this water,” he said noting that what was apparent among families he visited aside from them getting sick was the prevailing “sense of regret” for having signed lease agreements with gas drillers.

In “Gasland,” Fox engages several people near gas sites to ignite tap water on fire straight out of their kitchen faucets. He cited the town of Dimock in Susquehanna County, where people, initially gung-ho about the prospect of making a lot of money in gas, got a firsthand experience of fracking gone wrong. Dimock has more than 60 wells in a nine-square-mile area. At least 15 Dimock residents are suing Cabot Oil & Gas Co. for contaminating their water.

“The gas companies are now giving replacement water (tanked in) to 32 different families in Dimock,” said Fox, explaining that when he first visited the town in February 2009 while making his film, “it was just four.”

“And what is amazing to me,” Fox went on to say, noting his observations in Dimock, “is that every week or three times a week, families have to stay home and open up their garage or their house to the very company that poisoned their landscape (their water) and let them in, and have them hook up their water supply.”

“Fear and betrayal,” were the first two emotions Fox said he felt from those in Dimock, who “had no idea what had hit them.” “Dimock is par for the course. Dimock is not particularly a severe disaster. It’s the same situation in Hickory, Pa.,” as it is for the towns in Colorado and Fort Worth, Texas, he said. “I don’t think Dimock is ever coming back,” he said.

Fox cited a report recently released by the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association, saying the state had identified 1,435 environmental or safety violations by 43 Marcellus Shale drilling companies since January 2008. The fact that there are only about 1,458 Marcellus wells currently drilled in the state is a “horrible track record,” he said. “Clearly this is a disaster. If you have more than one violation per well, something is going drastically wrong.”

Since the Fox interview the association documented an additional 179 violations for a total of 1,614, with 1,056 violations having, or likely to have an impact on the environment. The group’s tracking of such violations can be found on its website http://conserveland.org.

Fox is hoping that his grassroots campaign will be able to counter what he described as an apparent conflict of interest in Pennsylvania between politicians and the gas industry.

Target for critics

Fox the man, along with his grassroots campaign, have become a lightning rod for criticism from big gas and some politicians.

A group of independents including The Pennsylvania Independent Oil and Gas Association and other oil and gas lobbyists known as Energy In Depth have launched a debunking of not only “Gasland,” but of its maker.

They claim, on their website, that Fox has misled the public in claims about fracking and the drilling industry as a whole. They jab at Fox as an avant-garde filmmaker and list a series of so-called myths featured in “Gasland,” including the alleged non-disclosure of chemicals used in the industry.

They say an average of only about 12 chemicals, mainly household substances, are used in a typical fracking, not hundreds. EID says that chemical use in the industry is regulated in that “the Occupational Safety and Health Administration mandates this information be kept at every well site, and made readily available to response and medical personnel in case of an emergency.”

The website features six comments by various state regulators defending current fracking practices.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, a nonprofit founded in 2008, which groups more than 30 drillers and 50 affiliates, including big-ticket names such as Halliburton, Chesapeake, Range Resources, and UGI Energy Services, carries a link on its home page to the EID debunking. The coalition headed by newly appointed president, Kathryn Klaber, firmly stands by the industry’s protection of the environment in statements carried on its website. The group also employs former Pennsylvania governor and U.S. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge.

Fox has pushed back at his critics. His film’s website, gaslandthemovie.com features a carefully crafted point-by-point rebuttal to the debunking claims that include scores of references, and responses from independent scholars, a former government official, and environmentalists.

Moreover, it displays copies of a section of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that exempts gas drillers from disclosing chemicals they use in fracking.

In a statement on the film’s website, Fox said he produced the rebuttal “not because I feel obligated to address what are clearly falsehoods and smear tactics, but to show the depth of the industry’s assault on the truth and to point out their obfuscations, misleading spin on information, and attempts to shut down questions about their practices.”

Renewable energy is key

In Fox’s view the transition to developing non-fossil, renewable energy sources is the key to solving the gas drilling problem. “We need to get into the 21st century. We are grateful to the fossil fuels for the last 100 years. Everything you see in front of you was created by fossil fuels in the last 100 years. But if the next 100 years are going to be fueled by fossil fuels – everything you see right there is going to get destroyed,” he posed.

Fox is the founder and artistic director of International WOW Company, a film and theater company that works closely with actors and non-actors from diverse cultural backgrounds.

He has written and produced at least 30 theatrical productions, and other independent films aside from “Gasland.” Founded in 1996, International WOW has premiered new work in eight countries with a rotating network over 100 actors, dancers, musicians, technical, and visual artists spanning 30 countries on five continents. With International WOW Company, Fox has received a Drama Desk Nomination, an Otto Award, five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and five prestigious MAP Fund Grants, an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship among many other awards and honors, according to the company’s website.

He says he gained much inspiration from his parents who raised him in the home they built in Milanville.

Fox is already working on his next project, a movie about renewable energy – meant to be a sequel to “Gasland.”

He plays the banjo, an instrument he plucked while wearing a gas mask in “Gasland,” as a means to de-stress while maintaining his hectic movie screening schedule and outreach efforts.

“I am getting better at it,” he quipped.