The link on PBS below is a good one to use to get a feel for an excellent film on fracking for natural gas. The film received an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2010.
http://video.pbs.org/video/1452296560/
The producer of the movie was in the news yesterday, as he was arrested
in Congress for trying to tape a session on the new fracking bill. His
crime was that he did not have press credentials. Meanwhile, the other media people seemed uninterested in the session -- no news when it comes to pollution.
The head chemist with So Methodist University was interviewed in
Gasland. He is employed by the government to monitor emissions by the
natural gas industry. Apparently, the Clean Air Act enacted by Nixon
only targets large facilities. This is why the natural gas industry has
literally thousands of small sites all over the country in over thirty
states. They are left unmonitored by the Clean Air Act. Public domain
laws allow the natural gas industry to start up a field, whether the
owner of the property approves or not. They compensate the owner so much
a year with a usage fee. The chemist, mentioned above, states that for
Texas alone, the volume of emissions into the air from the natural gas
fields equals or surpasses the emissions for all cars and trucks in
Texas. So this is no minor problem, especially if you believe like I do
that climate change is no hoax.
The film shows people on their own lands lighting the gases from streams
and indoor faucets. This occurs because the fracking process emits
fissures from one underground cavity of natural gas into another cavity
holding ground water. All ground water in the immediate area is
polluted. The natural gas industry people say there is no problem, while
also refusing to drink samples of the water for themselves.
What gets me is that this is touted as the national solution to protect
us from terrorism, i.e. we will not have to buy oil from the Arabs. Now
this is partly the result of the Cheney Oil Policy that the US Supreme
Court was protecting us from in the discovery process, or is it the
other way around?
Fred
