Gasland

Wow!  It's been a long time since I blogged!  I've thought about blogging, it's been on my to do list, but I haven't had a great topic or the time to really sit down.  I'm starting to think that getting a puppy right now wasn't such a great idea...

Yesterday I watched part of a movie that I thought was worth mentioning on here.  I would have watched the whole movie, but I was doing laundry and I had to go to a birthday party, but what I saw was very eye-opening.  It was a documentary film called Gasland.  Evan and I saw the filmmaker on a talk show and thought it looked like an
interesting movie.  Here's the synopsis from wikipedia.

Fox narrates his reception of a letter in May, 2008, from a natural gas company offering to lease his family's land in Milanville, Pennsylvania for $100,000 to drill for gas.^[1] This claim has been challenged by Energy In Depth, which has stated that the lease to which Fox refers in the movie was never offered and did not provide a $100,000 offer.^[2] Fox then set out to see how communities are being affected in the west where a natural gas drilling boom has been underway for the last decade. He spent time with citizens in their homes and on their land as they relayed their stories of natural gas drilling in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Texas, among others. He spoke with residents who have experienced a variety of chronic health problems directly traceable to contamination of their air, of their water wells or of surface water. In some instances, the residents are reporting that they obtained a court injunction or settlement monies from gas companies to replace the affected water supplies with potable water or water purification kits.^[3]

Throughout the documentary, Fox reached out to scientists, politicians and gas industry executives and ultimately found himself in the halls of Congress as a subcommittee was discussing the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, "a bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to repeal a certain exemption for hydraulic fracturing."^[4]Hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.^[5]

What struck me most was the statistics they were giving about the water usage.  (Of course what really stuck with me was how some of these people can hold a lighter to their kitchen sink and the water catches fire, but that's a different concern.)  According to the documentary (and also the website) to frack a well it takes 2-8 MILLION gallons of water.  With that water is mixed fracking fluid which is a mix of over 500 chemicals.  That's 2-8 MILLION gallons of water that is polluted each time a well is fracked-and a well can be fracked multiple times in it's "lifetime".  Suddenly my battle to decrease my shower time and use less toxic shampoos to help reduce the pollution in my local groundwater seems a little pathetic.  When I'm up against that, the good feeling I get from doing the right thing, knowing that I'm influencing others to do the right thing and that if everyone just does their little part we can make a difference seems pointless.  It's depressing. I'm looking forward to finishing the movie and watching the sequel Gasland 2.  

I'm really going to watch what I say here, but I would just suggest you check out the movie.  It can't hurt to be more aware, no matter what side you stand on.