Charismatic activist Josh Fox wears a gas mask and plays banjo in a toxic and potentially explosive EnCana gas well field, to get the image to that was made into the movie poster for “Gasland.”
Exposing the lack of regulation among the natural gas mining industry when it comes to land and water safety guidelines, Fox’s film shocks audiences—not only with the realization that unregulated natural gas mining alongside American water supplies has been federally sanctioned since 2005, but that no one seems to know about it. Cue the visits to homeowners who sold their ground rights to natural gas mining interests and who can now set their tap water aflame with a Bic lighter.
“It’s amazing to me that for eight years…no one’s been minding the store.” Fox said. He was referring to the unregulated release of a proprietary combination of chemicals into the ground in a mining process called “fracking.” The practice of fracking has coincided with widespread sickness of residents and animals, and with residential well water so steeped in foreign substances, that it can explode.
But, according to “Gasland,” almost all of the data collected about fracking problems is collected by concerned secondary sources. “Who is aggregating testing data?” Fox said. “Nobody. Not comprehensively, that’s part of the problem. It could take five or ten years to figure out what’s going on.”
The film’s production and release has roughly coincided with New York and Pennsyvania debates about what mining rights EnCana has around our area. The film, despite festival raves and an urgent topic, doesn’t seem to have secured distribution yet. Fox is traveling the film around, conjoined with a speaking tour. The film’s website has the dates and locations.
Filed under: Uncategorized
