Can You Ignite Your Tapwater with a Match?
What is it?
Rush Limbaugh’s hometown?
No, it’s a new documentary film about America since the beginning of the natural gas drilling boom started in 2005.
Check this excerpt from the press release about the film:
When filmmaker Josh Fox discovers that Natural Gas drilling is coming to his area—the Catskills/Poconos region of Upstate New York and Pennsylvania — he sets off on a 24 state journey to uncover the deep consequences of the United States’ natural gas drilling boom. What he uncovers is truly shocking—water that can be lit on fire right out of the sink, chronically ill residents of drilling areas from disparate locations in the US all with the same mysterious symptoms, huge pools of toxic waste that kill cattle and vegetation well blowouts and huge gas explosions consistently covered up by state and federal regulatory agencies.
Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown, Josh and his banjo encounter EPA whistleblowers, congressmen, world recognized scientists, and some of the most incredibly inspiring and heart-wrenching stories of ordinary Americans fighting against fossil fuel giants for environmental justice.
A major upswing in production took place in 2005 when the Congress and the Bush Administration exempted the industry and its new process of drilling, “Hydraulic Fracturing” from the Safe Drinking Water Act and many of our primary environmental protection laws. While the PR campaign for the Natural Gas industry promotes its product as “clean burning” it hides the fact that the new form of drilling, pioneered by Halliburton, is incredibly harmful to our environment and threatens to permanently contaminate a huge amount of the country’s water supply, create drastic air pollution conditions, and despoil huge areas. Despite overwhelming evidence of contamination, mismanagement and corruption, the general public remains unaware of the extreme effect the drilling may have on their lives.
Here’s the trailer for the film, which is showing on HBO on June 21st:
