GasLand (2010)

Narrated, Written, & Directed by Josh Fox

A lot of people are probably like me. When they see commercials for natural gas, and how it could help to cut emissions and save on energy costs for the country, you probably believe it. I mean, it comes from the ground, we have plenty of it, and it's right beneath all of us, not some shitty oil field constantly contested with AK-47's.

What most people probably don't know about is the process of fracking, or the way in which gas companies get the gas out of the ground. Quick version: They find a gas well (they're everywhere in the US) and plug a rig up to it. Once the rig is on, they pump the ground full of chemicals designed to trap the gas in the water they spray down into the hole. Once the gas has been captured in the hole, they rip it back out with basically the same process. The gas is captured in the tank, and the "produced water" that results from the fracking (aka water with tons of chemicals) is often unceremoniously dumped into a local river, stream, or even a pond of produced water.

You can imagine the problems that come about because of this. Obviously the "produced water" isn't safe, but it's dumped into the ground where we drink from, and streams and rivers that we need so desperately.

So on to Josh Fox. A Pennsylvania resident, Josh owns a house on the Delaware River in coal mining country. One day he is made an offer that sounds too good to be true; for every acre of his land that he lets a local gas mining company use, they'll pay him $5,000. With 20 acres, Josh is looking at a $100,000 payout. Sounds good, right? Josh went on a trip across America to find out.

Starting with reported cases, Josh starts interviewing people who have agreed to such a situation, and once he talks to these people, he realizes how disastrous the results are.

At first, many of the people he talks to are unwilling to say anything on camera, either because of non-disclosure agreements or pure fear of what may happen to them if they talk. Once he meets a few people that are sick of being scared, and just plain angry that they've been lied to, Josh decides to take matters into his own hands.

He begins collecting water samples from people that claim their water is bad. After doing some investigating, Josh finds that often people in rural areas have their drinking wells polluted by the fracking chemicals used by these companies, or the "produced" water that is dumped by them when they are done.

When you see the water, you understand what a problem this can be. Most of the water contains so much loose natural gas that's escaping into the water because of cracks in the ground caused by fracking, that it bubbles and some of it can even be lit on fire.

Josh sets out to find the people that can light their water on fire, and once he finds someone willing to talk, he's taken about. The concept sounds cool, lighting water from the faucet on fire, but once Josh actually tries it, he's terrified. He reveals that his excitement turned to being upset, as he said "You shouldn't be able to light water. That's not right". What went from a semi-comical concept went to instantly terrifying.

Doing his best Michael Moore, Josh gets the water tested, and of course pretty much all of it is undrinkable, which is in direct contrast to the spokesperson for the mining company, who has documents to prove that the water is safe.

When Josh puts it in front of them, they refuse to drink it, all the while vehemently contradicting Josh's independent reports that the drinking water is very unsafe. When shown the reports, his reply is "Well I don't know where you got this from, but we tested their water and it's safe." But he refuses to drink it.

Which is the story throughout. Even in different areas, the mining companies come in, destroy the water, pay for tests that say its safe, and then leave their equipment and continue to make money, regardless of what it does to the people that have to live there.

For some people, it destroys their lives. Most of the people featured live in rural areas, Colorado, Virginia, Pennsylvania, where their only source of water is a well. So when companies come in like this and destroy the water, they've not only made the home unlivable, but they've also made it unsellable to anyone else. Basically, they've trapped the people they conned, and now are taking absolutely no responsibility for it.

To me, none of it is surprising. To see yet another shady way that big business makes a dollar off of poor people and then not be sorry for it, well, that's basically the story of every successful American business of the past 50-80 years, so that's no real surprise. The fact that natural gas is called "eco-friendly" made me never think twice about it, but now, seeing the story of some of these people, it's just like everything else we make money on in this country: a life-destroying mess. A very intimate and personal documentary, I'm sure it will be shocking and revelatory to some, but for the rest of us it's a sad entry into the lamentations of American Big Business.

8.9/10