Sean Higgins
The Washington Examiner
3/4/2013
Last month, I wrote a column about a dueling pair of documentariesabout the debate over natural gas and “fracking,” the controversial method of releasing the gas from deep underground. Josh Fox’s 2010 film Gasland portrayed it as a major danger to the environment in general and drinking water in particular. Phelim McAleer’s filmFrackNation argued the contrary and poked several holes in Fox’s arguments.
In particular, FrackNation argued that one of Fox’s key points — that fracking can so contaminate water that it literally becomes flammable – was highly misleading. As I wrote in January:
McAleer shows people in the supposedly fracking-damaged regions saying their groundwater was always bad. The filmmakers show considerable evidence that methane gas in groundwater is not uncommon, and the flaming tap water may have been a naturally occurring phenomenon.
When McAleeer confronts Fox at a lecture, Fox surprisingly concedes that people had been lighting tap water on fire long before fracking. So why wasn’t this mentioned in Gasland? “It’s not relevant,” Fox insists.
Later in the film Fox is shown literally evading McAleer when he triers to talk to him at another public event…
The article continues at The Washington Examiner.
Related: Why fracking has Cuomo at a loss
