GasLand

This is perhaps one of the most shocking and disturbing films I've seen and the fact that it's all real is even more terrifying. The film follows Josh Fox who has been offered a vast amount of money by those who wish to drill on his land for natural gas. Concerned about the after effect he goes in search of some details.

What he finds is so utterly disturbing and sad and that being huge amounts of people whose health and welfare have been effected by natural gas drilling in their back yard. The industry is enormous and the amount of gas sites are in the hundreds of thousands some are even on 'public land'. People across much of the central USA have them in their back yards, tanks, drills, containers and various other pieces of industry, small to some comparison but still a blot on the landscape. But aesthetics are far from the worse of concerns.

The drilling for gas creates water contamination with a huge cocktail of chemicals seeping into drinking wells, streams and lakes. What was for years safe, whole areas are so full of chemical concoctions that in some instances if you hold a lit flame to a water source it erupts into flames. People have become sick due to the high quantities of dangerous and hazardous chemicals, pets and farm animals lose their hair and yet the companies involved do tests and say the water is safe to drink.

Watching these people is distressing, living on the land, with generations of history they are now powerless to do anything as the companies refuse to acknowledge the issue. They would also unlikely to sell up as no-one would buy a property with a great big well in the back yard, let alone if they knew the issues that come with it. That the US government, thanks to Dick Cheney, signed a law that made the companies exempt from the Clean Water Bill among others is shocking, had it been otherwise, this may not be happening.

There is some powerful stuff in this: the list of trucks it takes to actually make a natural gas well or the list of long complex chemical compounds used and found. There is the third generations farmer who is at a loss of what to do seeing the land around him change in the worse way possible. It is relentless, with person after person speaking about the effects, illness's, chemical clouds, explosions in the middles of the night and more that they now suffer. Independent tests show that water samples are so full of chemicals or that air samples are so dangerously over the recommended levels it's hard to imagine the ongoing consequences.

The film does at last show a glimmer of hope that being a small selection of activists and politicians making a stand and trying to stop what has happened in many parts of the US happening in those untouched. Near the end we see a congressional hearing in which some of the big companies spokespeople are brought down in a few simple questions, their denial that there is a risk, blatant lies which are not received well.

There is mention that despite the US setting there is relevance to Australia, indeed world wide. You can only hope that more people will see this film. My only gripe is the camera work, which at times is so bad, it's like a 5yr old was operating the camera. Otherwise this is powerful, shocking and moving stuff.

More of my review at my site iheartfilms.weebly.com

Greetings again from the darkness. This is Josh Fox's Oscar nominated documentary on the effects of natural gas drilling known as fracking. The film deserves your attention because it is a frightening look at how huge companies and the government can work in conjunction on projects that clearly put citizens at risk. I realize that last sentence sounds like Chicken Little yelling "conspiracy", but the details of the film will give you pause.

Can you light your tap water on fire? If so, chances are good that you are within range of natural gas drilling. Our government somehow agreed to allow this practice to remain exempt from the clean air and clean water laws. If brown water comes out of your faucet, then you already know what I am talking about.

Mr. Fox is from Pennsylvannia and that's where the story begins. He is concerned about his neighbors, the environment and our drinking supply. Clearly an enormous amount of chemicals are used in this drilling process. Clearly these chemicals seep into the wetlands and water supply of neighboring areas. Clearly too many people are looking the other way. The only thing not clear? The water near these drilling sites.

No mystery why this is allowed. The almighty dollar. It is cheaper for these companies to "pay off" the backwoods citizens than it is to not drill. Not sure how you decide the payoff when your kids are being poisoned and the damage to the water sources continues.

The film itself is a bit amateurish and sometimes the camera work is downright awful. But the point here is not to make a beautiful film. It is to educate ... to awaken people on just what is at stake with these dangerous procedures and lack of regulation and safety requirements.

The most painful piece was when the EPA executive was interviewed and he said that his agency must be directed by the government to check into allegations made by citizens. They have no authority to move on their own. If this is true, it's just one more instance of a bass-ackwards policy that needs to be reviewed. I encourage everyone to see this. If they aren't drilling in your area currently, it won't be long now.

I've watched many documentaries and I've appreciated almost all of them. They are usually wake up calls to the public. They inform people, like myself, of harms or dangers we were not aware of. A good documentarian will be that thorn in the side of governments, corporations, or otherwise as they dig and dig to uncover the hidden truth.

Josh Fox wanted to do that here. He wanted to uncover the truth about hydraulic fracturing aka fracking for natural gas. Fracking is a process of drilling and using a high pressure chemical water mixture to release natural gas from where it's deposited in the Earth's crust. The energy companies claim that fracking has no negative impact upon water sources, about a few dozen people that Josh spoke to will say differently. He showed brown water, yellow water, and water that was flammable--yes! Flammable. All of the water came from the wells or drinking sources for regular folks.

The material of "Gasland" was excellent. The narration of the documentary was not. Josh's low, barely audible, monotone voice didn't exactly make one's ears perk up in attention. Perhaps he should've borrowed from the Michael Moore style of lively comedic sarcasm to keep the audience awake. It's clear that Josh was a novice at this documentary thing, so I'll give him a pass.

This film is a much needed warning about the unsafe conditions around hydraulic fracturing. Anyone who doesn't see that clearly is obviously making money on hydraulic fracturing! Can we learn nothing from the current poisoning of the ocean due to unsafe practices in oil drilling? These companies only concern is profit- at all cost. As this film demonstrates and the current events show- poisoning the world around them is an acceptable risk for maximum profit. If not, why would they continue to campaign for the hydraulic fracturing (or Fracking) of the Marcellus Shale? (and the rest of the United States...)

Fracking is especially dangerous for New York City because the city gets its water from the Adirondacks. Currently, fracking is not allowed in the NYC watershed part of the Marcellus Shale which stretches from upstate NY to Tennessee. In addition to the problems with toxic chemicals injected into the ground with fracking, the Marcellus Shale is radioactive so that waste from fracking contains low levels of radioactivity.

I would love to see those reviewers trying to debunk this film drink the water coming from the faucets of so many homes shown in the film. Water that is flammable straight from the sink! Authorities defending fracking as harmless refuse to drink the water offered them in the film and so would those narrow minded negative reviewers. (Or should I say profiteering propagandists... what's your day rate for writing these reviews?)

Wind and sunlight is free and can be harnessed to produce the energy we need to keep the world moving without poisoning our water and air. Let's suck it up and make a change! It will take money and time and mean less profit for some but there is a bigger picture to consider.

Call Albany and ask them to not poison New York's drinking water by supporting the Englebright/Adabo bill. The number is 518-455-2800.

Give the operator your zip code and she'll transfer you to your senator's office

Tell them you'd like him or her to advocate for the Englebright/Adabo bill. The deadline is June 25th or close to it!

Politicians constantly use the word terrorism as a license to do whatever they want. I believe those politicians who support this behavior are actually accomplices to some of the most outrageous terrorist activity against the American people! If the Taliban were poisoning our water would we not do something about it? But when a corporation poisons the water government heads look the other way? for the almighty dollar? WAKE UP! STAND UP! DO SOMETHING!

Throughout this documentary I kept thinking about the endless whining Republicans engage in when they're asked to protect the environment, as if money is vastly more important than anything that's ever existed on the Earth.

These pollution scenarios can be laid at the feet of the Bushes, Cheneys, Limbaughs, Becks, Hannitys, Palins, Blankenships and other greediots who treat nature like a dumping ground, often citing "God's plan" as an excuse. How do people get so sick in the head that they think money is more important than life itself? These are the same parasites who keep claiming that global warming is a hoax, or the ozone hole was never a problem. Will we ever get that garbage out of the human gene pool?

The message in this film is a powerful one, and goes well beyond the specific issue of "fracking" to cover any enterprise that disturbs nature on a large scale. The sheer footprint of drilling operations on the physical landscape is another depressing angle, almost as bad as the water and air pollution. You can easily see these rigs and access roads in satellite photos. The rapidity of their deployment is changing the map daily. Thanks, Bush & Cheney for your "wise use" loopholes that may never be fully closed.

The human flood seems destined to grow until it consumes every possible acre that can satiate gluttony (temporarily). Wind turbines are no exception, even though they wear a "green" mantle. Future plans for endless construction will turn non-industrialized acreage into an old curiosity. That's "progress" by the standard growthist definition. Leave no "productive" land untouched. I can see national parks being ringed by the sights and odors of drilling rigs, leaving no real place to escape to. It's already encroaching on the Tetons.

The only weakness of this documentary was the shaky, often poorly focused camera work, though it worked to exaggerate the grim mood and some of it seemed intentional. Pro cameraman or not, Mr. Fox had guts in making this piece and is to be highly commended.

Still, I was left with the sick feeling that legislation will never fully decontaminate these activities because so many people are basically evil.