Gasland Part II Page #3

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isn't in the dark anymore.

It's an outright hit.

"Fracking" was Number 3 on

the list of most popular words

in the English language in 2011,

right behind "occupy"

and "deficit."

And with one to two million

new wells projected,

America is in a fracking frenzy.

Hydraulic fracturing,

or "fracking," is a method of gas extraction

drilling deep down thousands

of feet to a shale formation

and then forcing down the well

millions of gallons of water

laced with toxic chemicals

at such intense pressures

that it created fractures

in the rock and freed up the gas.

But you never just drill

one well in a shale play,

you drill thousands,

creating an industrial

redefinition of the landscape.

Millions of gallons

of water per well,

thousands upon thousands

of truck trips,

thousands of tons

of proprietary chemicals

injected into the ground.

And because fracking

explicitly is exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act,

the industry doesn't have

to tell the public what chemicals they're using.

The bigger picture still is

that we were just in the corner

of the largest domestic

natural gas drilling campaign

in history, now occupying

34 states.

The gas drilling

and fracking industry

was knocking on

the doors of millions.

And with thousands of cases

of water contamination,

air pollution,

and health problems

reported across the U.S.,

it's not just the numbers

that get you dizzy.

There was only one problem.

The gas industry

denied everything.

To date, we have found

no verified instance

of hydraulic fracturing

harming groundwater.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
The war for who

was going to tell this story

was on.

WOMAN, ON PHONE:

We had good water.

The people in Dimock

don't have good water anymore.

[Ticking]

LESLEY STAHL, VOICE-OVER:

In the shale gas gold rush,

Dimock is the ghost town.

STAHL:
How many of you lost

your water supply?

MAN, VOICE-OVER:

They said, "Dad, we got gas in the water over there.

I can actually shake

the jug up and light it."

You put a match

to your water and it went up in flames?

I can take my water,

shake it up, turn it up,

and it will explode-like.

Scary?

FEMALE NEWS ANCHOR:

All Cabot representatives say

they don't believe

drilling operations caused the water problems.

WOMAN:
We're not

greedy people.

We just want some

justice for something

that's terribly wrong

that happened here.

[Equipment beeping]

[Engines chugging]

GIRL:
They look like

the Rovers on Mars.

WOMAN, ON PHONE:
Cabot said that

they were not responsible for the contamination of the wells.

It is a scary situation

to accuse a large corporation

of anything like that.

FOX, VOICE-OVER:
After years

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