On Memorial Day, fractivists in Illinois headed to their state capital to fight for democracy.

A bit of background- on the Friday before Memorial Day Weekend, the Illinois House Executive Committee voted to pass a measure that would fast-track fracking in Illinois, allowing fracking in the state before the Illinois Department of Natural Resources finished the rule making process.

The measure would circumvent democracy, ignoring 36,000 public comments the IDNR received on the state’s proposed fracking rules and create a fracking sacrifice zone in Southern Illinois. 

A hearing on the legislation was set for Monday, Memorial Day. Despite the clear attempt to cut the people of Illinois out of the process, citizens showed up, demanding that their voices be heard.

Community groups attending the hearing included Illinois People’s Action, SAFE, IIRON student network, The People’s Lobby and Sierra Club of Illinois.

The legislation died, failing to get enough support to pass. And as Illinois People’s Action say in the video

“Oil and Gas tried to fast track fracking, but the people fought back and won thus proving once again that organizing works!”

Keep organizing. It works.

- Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

Through good old fashioned organizing like neighbor talking to neighbor, and a great legal team in Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, the citizen’s of Dryden were able to take democracy back and ban fracking.

I was a field organizer on the 2012 Obama Campaign, and while I’m often deeply upset about the administration’s view on fracking, I’m still grateful I was apart of the campaign because I learned a powerful lesson that has guided my work ever since. And it came straight from the President himself.

On a nationwide staff call leading up to Election Day Barack President said, “I still believe that neighbor talking to neighbor is worth more than any amount of corporate spending.

That sentence sums everything I believe about the anti-fracking movement.

The citizens of Dryden have proven the President’s words to be true.  Dozens of other communities across the world, who have passed bans or moratoria, have proven his words to be true. And even those who couldn’t keep fracking out, but now know new neighbors or have become activist for the first time are proving his words to be true.

The industry wants people to feel isolated, like they have no choice but to sign a lease. They want to fracture communities and stay in control.

But if we get organized and talk to our neighbors, we can build something they can’t buy.

I hope this video inspires you as much as it did me to keep up the fight.  We are truly building something worth more than any corporation’s yearly profits.

Please watch and share tour video of the week with your community.

What you’re doing is democracy at work.

Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator.

After fighting shale gas development for almost 6 years in Pennsylvania, and seeing the government choose the side of oil and gas company profits over public safety, this decision is a landmark for all Pennsylvanians’ rights.

The tide of public opinion has turned against fracking, with almost 2/3 of Pennsylvanians in support of a moratorium. This decision says unequivocally putting fracking profits over people is unconstitutional.

Tracy Carluccio, Deputy Director of Delaware Riverkeeper Network, speaking at a rally in Harrisburg, PA.

Not From Gasland Journal: Take that, you bullies!

While we are all fighting the stranglehold the oil and gas industry has on Gasland, more often than not it’s difficult to claim many advances.  But last week a truly historic decision was declared when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out Act 13, a law crafted by the industry and their cronies in Harrisburg and signed into law by Governor Corbett in February 2012.  Act 13 preempted municipal zoning and planning of oil and gas operations, established mandatory waivers of stream setbacks contained in state law, and took away the rights of local governments to protect the public trust.  

But immediately a fight ensued.  Never mind that everything in Pennsylvania seemed to be going the gas corporations’ way, that $23 Million has been spent by the gas industry to influence Pennsylvania (PA) politicians, that Governor Tom Corbett’s election campaign has received over $1.8 M, and that the industry was running roughshod in a gas extraction frenzy that leaves ruined communities, destroyed natural resources and polluted water supplies in its wake.  A legal challenge was essential because and it was a violation of the Constitution and if allowed to stand, the law was a death knell for Pennsylvania and its people.

Seven municipalities, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and Dr. Mehernosh Khan, a physician practicing in southwestern PA, challenged Act 13 as unconstitutional, relying heavily on Article 1, Section 27 of the PA Constitution, the Environmental Rights Amendment.  The municipalities are:  Township of Robinson, Washington County; Township of Nockamixon, Bucks County; Township of South Fayette, Allegheny County; Peters Township, Washington County; Township of Cecil, Washington County; Mount Pleasant Township, Washington County; and the Borough of Yardley, Bucks County.

Anti- Fracking rally in Harrisburg, PA

On July 26, 2012 the Commonwealth Court declared the statewide zoning provisions in Act 13 unconstitutional, null, void and unenforceable.  The Court also struck down the provision of the law that required DEP to grant waivers to the setback requirements in Pennsylvania’s Oil and Gas Act.  Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Dr. Kahn lost standing.  The Commonwealth appealed.  On October 17, 2012 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard arguments that Pennsylvania’s Act 13 is unconstitutional, unjustly supersedes all local ordinances related to oil and gas operations, extinguishes municipal zoning of these operations, and exposes the public and the environment to pollution and degradation from these activities.  The Court deliberated for more than a year.

On December 19, 2013 the PA Supreme Court ruled that Act 13 violates the Pennsylvania Constitution.  In doing so, the Court struck down the shale gas industry’s effort to force every municipality in the state to allow gas drilling and related industrial operations in every zoning district, rejected one-size-fits-all zoning, the removal of public trust obligations of government officials to local citizens, and the waivers for stream setbacks as unconstitutional.  Chief Justice Castille authored the historic majority opinion.  Justices Todd, McCaffrey and Baer agreed on the unconstitutionality of the provisions, resulting in a 4 to 2 decision.

Justices Castille, Todd, and McCaffrey held that the provisions violate Article I, Section 27 of the Pennsylvania Constitution – the Environmental Rights Amendment.  Chief Justice Castille stated that “we agree with the citizens that, as an exercise of the police power, Sections 3215(b)(4) and (d), 3303, and 3304 are incompatible with the Commonwealth’s duty as trustee of Pennsylvania’s public natural resources.” The three Justices recognized that the Plaintiffs sought to “vindicate fundamental constitutional rights that, they say, have been compromised by a legislative determination that violates a public trust.”

In reviewing Section 3303, the three Justices affirmatively noted that the public trust obligations imposed by Section 27 run to all levels of government in the Commonwealth, including municipalities.  As a constitutional obligation to local citizens, the Justices expressly recognized that no statute can remove such an obligation from municipalities, and likewise cannot remove the “implicitly necessary authority to carry into effect its constitutional duties.”  The Court understood that local citizens made investments in their communities based on expectations created by local ordinances, including local ordinances that sought to protect local public trust resources.  To the Court, Section 3303 effectively “commands municipalities to ignore their obligations under Article I, Section 27 and further directs municipalities to take affirmative action to undo existing protections of the environment in their localities” to the detriment of local citizens.

In discussing Section 3304’s uniform zoning provisions, Justices Castille, Todd, and McCaffrey agreed that the provisions “sanctioned a direct and harmful degradation of the environmental quality of life in these communities and zoning districts.”  They also concluded that the Act forced some citizens to bear “heavier environmental and habitability burdens than others” in violation of Section 27’s mandate that public trust resources be managed for the benefit of all the people.  Further, the three Justices found similar constitutional infirmities in Section 3304 as they found in Section 3303, in that Section 3304 “removes local government’s necessary and reasonable authority to carry out its trustee obligations” because it “prohibit[ed] the enactment of ordinances tailored to local conditions.”

As for Section 3215(b)(4), which established mandatory waivers of stream setbacks, the three Justices found this provision equally infirm.  Based on the Commonwealth’s argument as to Section 3215(b)(4), the Justices struck the entirety of Section 3215(b).  The Justices agreed with the Commonwealth that the waivers provision in Section 3215(b)(4) could not be read independent of the rest of Section 3215(b).  In reviewing the entirety of Section 3215(b), the Justices disapprovingly noted that “Section 3215(b) appears to provide for nothing more than a set of voluntary setbacks or, as an alternative, the opportunity for a permit applicant to negotiate with the Department of Environmental Protection the terms or conditions of its oil or natural gas well permit,” finding it “remarkabl[e]” that the DEP had the burden of proving protective conditions to be necessary.  Further, because Section 3215(d) did not require the DEP to act on local concerns raised in comments to the DEP, “Section 3215 fosters decisions regarding the environment and habitability that are non-responsive to local concerns” to the detriment of public trust beneficiaries – Pennsylvania citizens.

Justice Baer concurred in finding Act 13 unconstitutional, agreeing with the Commonwealth Court’s reasoning.  Justice Baer stated that the provisions “force municipalities to enact zoning ordinances, which violate the substantive due process rights of their citizenries.”  He further noted “Pennsylvania’s extreme diversity” in municipality size and topography and that zoning ordinances must “give consideration to the character of the municipality,” among other factors, which Act 13 did not.  In recognizing what Act 13 meant for local municipalities, Justice Baer stated, “As Challengers point out, Act 13 makes it easier for Chevron to establish a drilling rig in the middle of a corn field than a church to build a small ten-pew worship space in the same field.”

Shale Gas Outrage outside of Governor Corbett's office

In a reversal of the findings of the Commonwealth Court, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that Dr. Khan satisfies standing requirements. The court noted that “existing jurisprudence permits pre-enforcement review of statutory provisions in cases in which petitioners must choose between equally unappealing options and where the third option, here refusing to provide medical services to a patient, is equally undesirable.” Opinion at 25. In other words, provisions of Act 13 put Dr. Khan in the untenable and objectionable position of choosing between violating Act 13’s confidentiality agreement and “violating his legal and ethical obligations to treat a patient by accepted standards, or not taking a case and refusing a patient medical care.” Id. Therefore, Dr. Khan’s interests were indeed “substantial and direct…not remote,” and conferred standing. Opinion at 26. The Court remanded Dr. Kahn’s case to the Commonwealth Court for further proceedings.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court also reversed Commonwealth Court’s finding that the Delaware Riverkeeper Network lacked standing in this case. Specifically, the court found that DRN’s members engendered “a substantial and direct interest in the outcome of the litigation premised upon the serious risk of alteration in the physical nature of their respective political subdivisions and the components of their surrounding environment. This interest is not remote.” Opinion at 21-22. Further, the court also found that Maya van Rossum, as the Executive Director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, also has standing in her official capacity to represent the membership’s interests.” Opinion at 22. The ruling therefore sets important precedent for what immediate interest or harm environmental organizations and their members need to demonstrate in order to properly establish standing.

The Supreme Court ruling is looking like a turning point, a watershed moment, for Pennsylvania.  The Petitioners knew they would win if the law was still held sacred by the state’s highest Court.  But how big the win is exceeds expectations.  The Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA) now has new life and the application of that life has the potential to renew the potency of what should be the bottom line in environmental decision making.  That foundation is the health of our communities and the environment that sustains us and future generations.  By recognizing the power of ERA, the Court upholds the right of citizens and reaffirms the responsibility of our elected officials to protect the public trust, to fight for people and our natural world to be the priority, not greedy corporations and their shills.

It is inspiring to read that the Court stated, ““As the citizens illustrate, development of the natural gas industry in the Commonwealth unquestionably has and will have a lasting, and undeniably detrimental, impact on the quality of these core aspects [life, health, and liberty: surface and ground water, ambient air, etc.] of Pennsylvania’s environment, which are part of the public trust.” Opinion at 117.

Additionally, the Court stated, “By any responsible account, the exploitation of the Marcellus Shale Formation will produce a detrimental effect on the environment, on the people, their children, and future generations, and potentially on the public purse, perhaps rivaling the environmental effects of coal extraction.” Opinion at 118.

Delaware River screening of Gasland

These findings apply beyond Pennsylvania and support the truth we all know about Gasland.  That the highest Court in the most recently intensely drilled state in the Nation has declared gas extraction operations to be undeniably harmful to the environment and a threat to future generations and potentially the public purse, puts wind under our sails everywhere we are struggling to take back what the industry has stolen.

The Decision and concurring opinion can be found at: http://www.delawareriverkeeper.org/resources/Reports/Opinion%20J-127A-D-2012oajc.pdf

Submitted by Delaware Riverkeeper Maya van Rossum, Attorneys Jordan Yeager and Lauren Williams and Tracy Carluccio, Deputy Director, Delaware Riverkeeper Network.

Intro from Lee Ziesche, Grassroots Coordinator and post from April Lane, Arkansas organizer:

Arkansas is feeling the full effects of being an extractive energy state. It’s been rocked by earthquakes and covered in oil, yet often does not get the same attention as states like Pennsylvania or Texas. Even within the fracking movement.

That’s why our grassroots tours are so important.  They give us a chance to visit some of the most impacted areas and talk to the people who are often out of the spotlight. And then share their stories with you.

Josh and I had heard about the Mayflower Oil Spill, but didn’t know the full devastating effects until we went to Arkansas to screen Gasland Part II and talked to those on the front lines who are seeing the environmental and health impacts up close.

Below is a post about the spill from April Lane. a leading organizer in Arkansas.

Not From Gasland Journal: The Mayflower Oil Spill

It has now been a little over six months since the Exxon Pegasus Pipeline ruptured in Mayflower, AR flooding the community with over 250,000 plus gallons of Wabasca Heavy Crude oil, a type of oil mined very closely to Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada.  Wabasca Heavy Crude is a highly toxic substance known as bitumen.  Because the bitumen is so heavy, it must be diluted with lighter hydrocarbons like Benzene to allow flow through a pipeline.  The final product after dilution is known as “dilbit.”

There is much we now know about the Pegasus Pipeline and dilbit it carries.  We know that Pegasus is a “vintage” pipeline that is not adequately equipped to carry such a product. We know through the independent air monitoring we performed that there were upwards of 30 chemicals in the air circulating near neighborhoods, schools and shopping centers after the pipeline rupture. We know that many of those chemicals are very harmful to human health. Benzene, Toluene, Ethyl benzene and Xylene are among some of the more highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals in the pipeline. Each of these chemicals are toxic on their own and are even more harmful when they interact with each other synergistically as well as cumulatively.  And one major problem is that there is little research on a vast majority of these chemicals and little to none on how they are exacerbated once combined.

First responders work desperately to build barricades to keep the oil from overwhelming Lake Conway.

In a recent article by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality released a statement about the toxins they found in the area of Lake Conway referred to as “The Cove,” where the majority of the oil was diverted. This statement professes in little detail that the compounds they detected were not a risk to human health but that there are ecological concerns. On August 16^th, nearly five months after the pipeline rupture and spill, one Volatile Organic Compound and 11 toxic Polynuclear Aromatic Hydrocarbons were detected; the most toxic of those is benzo-pyrene.

The fact is that if there is an ecological concern there also is a human health concern. Humans are certainly a part of the ecology.  For the state of Arkansas to say that there is no risk from consuming the fish from Lake Conway, and that there is “minimal to no” risk to humans is unacceptable. The toxins that were spilled into the environment can be ingested and absorbed by fish and other wildlife and can bio-accumulate and very easily cause a negative impact to species, including humans, that eat fish and other wildlife from Lake Conway or the surrounding, impacted areas.

The damage to the Lake can be seen by merely looking at the wildlife that used to call it home.

The state also maintains that no evidence of oil has been found in the main body of Lake Conway despite residential sightings of sheen as well as the fact that the cove and main body of the Lake are only separated by a drainage ditch and a road.  They are hydraulically connected. In addition to being naturally connected through underground channels, contaminated water from the cove was pumped into the main body of Lake Conway several times after the rupture.  The risk of contamination is high and will continue to get higher as the sediment continues to accumulate more of these toxins and as the surrounding wildlife continue to cross-contaminate the area.

These agencies are making these determinations of the effects based on the concentrations being detecting in the air, water and soil. But how are they making these determinations? They are looking at raw data and saying that the detections are below levels, “likely to cause an impact.” They are using standards that are developed by testing these chemicals on animals and we have by no means tested them all. In order to assess whether the standards are appropriate to identifying human health effects we must collect information from the community using a comprehensive health assessment. If these standards are not appropriate and need to be altered to further protect human health then assessing is the only way to determine that. To date, no state or federal agency has begun assessing communities that have been subject to an oil spill.

If we simply look back at history we can draw from many instances in which regulatory agencies and corporations deemed something safe and unlikely to impact humans that years later we found to be disastrously harmful to public health. In fact, all you need to do is turn on your television to see the latest drug being recalled and the onslaught of legal ads soliciting citizens who may have fallen victim to this or that FDA approved drug. Smoking cigarettes was deemed safe for decades until finally appropriately labeled as cancer-causing. It is no secret that we cannot continue to solely rely on our government and our regulatory agencies to police the very companies that overwhelm them with money, lawsuits and lobbyists. That is why many of us throughout communities across America have picked up the slogan, “If not us, who? If not now, when?”

The signs of contamination are clear to everyone who lives near the water and has seen the evidence of oil drenching the banks.

Since the rupture, Faulkner County Citizens Advisory Group, a non-profit community group whose Board I serve on, have put out advisories and press releases informing the community of this highly toxic exposure and that they are at risk of developing short and long-term health effects. FCCAG enlisted the support of scientists to aid in understanding the severity of the situation.  Environmental scientist Dr. Wilma Subra, who is a recipient of the MacArthur Genius award, and Dr. Riki Ott, a marine toxicologist who worked very closely with residents after the Exxon Valdez spill, both visited our community for the first Town Hall even that FCCAG hosted for the residents of Mayflower. Our hope was to get these experts in the same space as residents, as well as state and local officials, so that we could all be educated at the same time about the risks from the spill.  This was an important opportunity for state officials and agencies as Arkansas has never dealt with this type of chemical spill.  Unfortunately, though, very few local and state officials attended this important event, even though it was highly publicized and they were personally invited. FCCAG has hosted six Town Halls since the pipeline rupture, and still there have been very little involvement by local and state officials.   

FCCAG’s main organizational mission is to connect local authorities and residents who have concerns.  However, since the spill, and despite our efforts, there remains a vast communication gap between the decision makers and those who have suffered from the oil spill. A mentality of “act first, ask questions later, or never” quickly emerged.   We do not know or understand why the Unified Command and local state agencies such as the Arkansas Department of Health did not hold additional public meetings in order to inform residents and document their symptoms and concerns.

There is also a clear disconnect between Arkansas’s officials and those in places like Kalamazoo, Michigan where similar substances have been spilled.  There has been no attempt by Arkansas to connect to other communities that have suffered similar spills, so our state is missing out on an important opportunity to learn and to properly remediate.  Fortunately, FCCAG and Mayflower residents have made connections to Kalamazoo and the Gulf Coast.  From these communications, we have learned that they have experienced many of the same things that we are experiencing now in Arkansas: a lack of communication from state agencies, cookie cutter answers and newsletters pumped out by the responsible party, and a lack of investigative reporting by local media outlets.  Residents in all of these communities continue to ask why more precautionary steps have not been taken to prevent such disasters and why residents have not been given relevant information to make their own decisions, especially regarding health treatment options.

Workers were just as severely affected as they attempt to clean up what many experts say is impossible to fully remove

We do not know why the evacuated area, labeled as the “impact zone,” was limited only to the Northwoods subdivision and did not encompass the entire residential area where many people were immediately exposed, and immediately experienced health effects. We do not know why only the residents of the subdivision were allowed into the first meeting held by Unified Command when this event clearly impacted the entire community. Why were the residents not informed of the risks using public service announcements?  Why was the community as a whole not instructed to contact the Department of Health as well as the Poison Control Center and given criteria to determine their exposure?  These few questions merely scratch the surface of what has unfolded in the rural community of Mayflower.  Most questions remain unanswered and many things have yet to be investigated. 

For many months, concerned community members and FCCAG have been trying to assist effected residents in how to best address their health symptoms which include regulatory organ problems, skin rashes, boils, internal bleeding, nausea, chronic headaches, loss of appetite, metallic tastes on their tongues, and many other symptoms.

One conclusion I have drawn is that we as a state and a nation are failing our people. We are failing communities like Mayflower, AR and Kalamazoo, MI, and we will undoubtedly fail many more if we continue to allow large corporations to pump these undisclosed, highly toxic substances underneath our feet. It should be mandatory for these companies to perform human impact studies so that we know what we and our children may be exposed to. To not require this is unacceptable and may severely impact our ability to live as productive human beings. We have an innate human right to flourish in our communities without a corporation dumping toxic waste in it, destroying it in a matter of minutes, never to fully recover. So where do we go from here? What do we do? Well there is one answer, we unite!

This is the United States of America and it is time that we send a message to agencies and elected officials that we are taking back our rights and refuse to allow incidents such as this to continue happening.  Furthermore, we refuse to allow our state and federal agencies charged with protecting us to disengage from our communities and allow a multi-billion dollar corporation to turn its back on the people they injured. This is not over and the work has just begun in identifying what the impact to Mayflower, AR has been and will be in the coming years. It is time for all hands on deck.

“Those who have the privilege to know, have the duty to act.” – Albert Einstein

In Service,

April Lane

Project Director, Faulkner County Bucket Brigade
Board member, Faulkner County Citizens Advisory Group
Co-Director, ArkansasFracking.org
President, UCA Environmental Alliance

After over 45 Gasland Part II screenings across the globe, we’ve seen a lot of awesome activist t-shirts. 

I love them because they always reflect the distinct characteristic of the place we’re at and the people organizing there. One of my favorites is a t-shirt organizers from Denton, Texas made.

Organizers from Denton, Texas

It has a football player dodging through drilling rigs and says ‘Don’t Frack the Home Team’ on the back. But that’s exactly what is happening in Denton, where a drilling rig is right near the Apogee Stadium, where the University of North Texas plays.

And it’s not just the football field. In 2010, a drilling company drilled three wells right next to homes, a hospital, and a public park with a playground, forcing people to come together to form the Denton Drilling Awareness Group which has been fighting for more robust ordinances to protect health, safety, public welfare, and community integrity ever since.

DAG organizers at the Gasland Part II screening in Fort Worth, Texas

We’ve seen this all over the country. Rigs, condensate tanks and compressor stations right in people’s backyards, putting dangerous toxins just a stone’s throw or soft breeze away from families.

Below is a post from Adam Briggle, of the DAG,  reposted from his blog Drilling Denton that will show you just how close to home drilling in Denton is.

Frack to the Future: Why Are Drilling Rigs so Close to Homes in Denton?

Denton’s new drilling ordinance established a 1,200 foot setback between gas wells and protected uses like homes. But the future of fracking in Denton is going to be a story about gas wells much, much closer to homes than that. 

We first got a glimpse of our future in April, just a few months after the ordinance was passed, when a development was approved that would put homes less than 250 feet from gas wells.

Now the picture is becoming even clearer. EagleRidge is drilling two wells simultaneously off of Vintage and S. Bonnie Brae. There are some homes just 100 feet from the pad sites. Many more homes are just 500 feet, or less, away. The diesel engines on site are pumping out black smoke.

I took this picture down there as the school bus was dropping off children. You can see one of the wells (south side)  – there was another one, even closer, behind me as I took the picture. The future of fracking in Denton is going to look like this: polluting industries plopped right next to houses. And all the activity we are seeing now is just the appetizer for the rush that is going to happen when we really start exporting natural gas and prices spike. 

Here is the Railroad Commission GIS image for the wells. 

And just tonight, the Planning and Zoning Commission approved another project that will bring homes 100 feet from a gas well.

You might wonder how this could be when the new ordinance seems to make this illegal. The answer is that the 1,200 foot setback in the ordinance does not apply to situations where new homes are built around existing gas well pad sites. I don’t quite know why this is. It has something to do with vested rights…but it also just seems to be a terrible oversight in the ordinance. DAG recommended fixing this problem. But that idea didn’t get any play.

Most of the pad sites that will ever be in Denton are already platted and at least partly developed. And most of them are south and west of town where lots of our population growth is likely to occur. So, we are going to see more and more situations where homes are in very close proximity to pad sites where new wells will be added and old wells will be reworked and refracked for years to come. And none of this will be covered by our so-called current ordinance. 

We have learned that fracking and neighborhoods do not mix. But we are going to keep on mixing them. 

Some will say that this is acceptable, because those homebuyers are making an informed decision to move next to a gas well. But they are not. They don’t know it is coming. I have heard from several folks in the neighborhood where I took this picture, and they tell me that this came as a surprise. Some say they wouldn’t have bought homes there if they knew this was going to happen.

Oh, and readers of this blog won’t be shocked to learn that the people in this neighborhood do not own any of the mineral rights and, thus, are not making a dime from the drilling. Records from the Denton Central Appraisal District show that the mineral ownership of these wells is split between five owners in Dallas, Austin, Abilene, and Lewisville.

We’ll be posting a couple times a week here, sharing posts from folks we met on the road, updates from the subjects of Gasland and Gasland Part II and a lot of pictures and stories of things we experienced on the road. 

But we also want to hear from you. Send me an email at screenings@gaslandthemovie.com if you want to us to share your story. 

From Lee Ziesche, Grassroots Coordinator:

I wanted Josh’s Power Shift speech to be the first post of our Not From Gasland Journal for a few reasons.

After touring for months, I think this speech embodies a lot of what we experienced on the road. Josh talks about many of the people whose stories we shared through Gasland Part II screenings and others we met along the way.

I feel the speech sums up the true heart and guiding principles of the movement and where they should lead us going forward. 

Power Shift took place in Pittsburgh, the first city to ban fracking in the world. 6,000 young people, the future of the movement, in the city that showed us the way could not be more appropriate to set the stage for the story we want to tell. 

I’m from Pittsburgh. The woods, rivers and people of Western PA are a huge part of who I am and what keeps me motivated to fight. They are my story and that’s what this is about.  Our stories.

When I listen to and read Josh’s speech, I can feel the energy of the thousands of people in the room. His words and their spirit allows me to know, somewhere deep inside, without a doubt, that I will be a part of the story that will change the world. I hope it does the same for you. 

Thanks,
Lee

(Josh begins at 38:27)

TEXT OF JOSH’S SPEECH FROM POWER SHIFT:

Welcome to Fracksylvania

I want to tell you a little something about the song that I just played that I learned from Pete Seeger. I was introducing him. If you don’t know who he is you can Google him later. I was introducing him, 94-years old, one of the great authors of this movement, of this country, and he said, “You know that was the biggest hit song of 1814. A fellow sang that song in a bar and it was such a big hit he had to sing it twice.  And at 4 miles an hour, clip clop clip clop, all the way across the United States that song became the most popular song in our nation.  And one hundred years later it was adopted as our national anthem.” 

And if a bar song can become our national anthem, then really we’re all just making up the United States as we go along.  And anything is possible. 

You are writing the next great chapter of the United States of America. 

The movement to ban fracking has spread all over the world. In France we just won. We had the entire country of France ban fracking. The Netherlands just banned fracking. We have a movement to ban fracking in nine countries in Europe.  In South Africa.  In Australia.  New York State is still frack free.  There are five ballot initiatives in Colorado.  There’s one in Michigan. There’s a ban fracking movement in California.  But do you know where all of this started?  Do you know the first place in the world to ban fracking? 

That’s right. The great city of Pittsburgh.  

Doug Shields, the city council, it starts here. You’re on hallowed ground in Pittsburgh. 

When the natural gas industry came to my doorstep in the Upper Delaware in Pennsylvania, across the state, in the watershed, and I knew I was surrounded by people who had leased, this was probably the loneliest and scariest day of my life.

But I’m not so lonely anymore.

How does this happen? How does a room like this happen? 

I was down in Guy Arkansas, a place that had 1000 earthquakes in a year.  And I met this lady named Susan Frey, the earthquake lady. She had a plumb bob attached to the bottom of her coffee table.  Every time it moved she’d look up the earthquake on the website and sure enough there was one.  Most of the quakes were micro quakes.  But then a 4.7 knocked her husband off of his La Z Boy and put cracks in the walls of the local high school. And I imagine that as he hit the ground something happened.

Or Amee Ellsworth in Colorado, whose water was so flammable and contaminated with methane that she could light it on fire out of her sink.  She was showering in the dark because she was so afraid that a spark from her light bulb would blow her up in her shower. And I can imagine her standing there dripping, naked in the dark, terrified, something happened to her.

Or the Gee family, in Tioga County Pennsylvania. Five generations on the same land. Shell built a six well horizontal fracking pad 200 feet from their bedroom window.  Their pond was contaminated. Their water was flammable. They had to sell out and sign a non-disclosure agreement, selling their house of five generations to Shell.  And as they walked out on their first amendment rights, forced to walk out on their own first amendment rights to tell their story, away from their home and their right to tell their story, and left the house, closing the door realizing they didn’t have to lock it, I imagine something happened to the Gee Family.

Or Lois Frank, my good friend, the former chief of police of the Blood Tribe in Canada, who stood between her ancestral lands and invading fracking trucks. And as she was arrested, the former chief of police, just like so many were arrested in New Brunswick yesterday, I can imagine something happened.     

With drilling and fracking in 34 states, frac sand mining in a half dozen others, tar sands development in the west, oil shale in California and North Dakota, deep water drilling in the gulf and super storms in the east, Mountaintop removal for coal destroying Appalachia, the keystone pipeline proposed to run down the center of this country like a scar that won’t heal- we are all members of front line communities.  We are all in the target zone.  That’s our story.  That is what is happening to us. That’s why we’re here.  

So.  President Obama.  What happened to you?  We delivered you 650,000 signatures on a petition to ban fracking on public lands.  What happened to you, that your response was silence?  

It was a grassroots movement that elected you president. How can you be ignoring the largest grassroots movement for environmental justice and democratic reform in decades?

This is on you.  

We don’t just need you to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. We don’t just need you to ban fracking on public lands. We need you go out there and campaign for us as we campaigned for you. 

I know there can be no democracy without freedom from fossil fuels. I’ll say it again. There can be no democracy without freedom from fossil fuels.

I know I have a coal-fired power plant vibrating in my pocket
The text message reads:
LOL I just blew up your favorite mountain
I have a fracked gas well at home in my kitchen
I vote for okra, for brook trout I caught behind my house
But if I don’t storm the streets my recipe doesn’t include democracy
I have an oil spill on every station in my car radio
And I have trails of exhaled carbon floating in supermarket aisles
toppling over with 3,000-mile tomatoes
and 6,000-mile kiwis
Every meal I eat has a frequent flyer account
And every buzz, click, whirr and chime on one or another object
clinging to me is my consent.

But I have to remain optimistic. 

I know we can run the world on renewable energy. 

I met with French wine makers in Ardeche, the origin of that ban fracking movement in France. They won. They said we’re fighting off fracking to defend our wine. We have to be optimistic. We make wine. It’s our job to make people happy.

And as a filmmaker, I feel the same way. And as a participant in this movement, I feel the same way.

We are creating change right now. We are creating a change in the climate right now. The change in the political climate. The change in the climate of how it feels when we come together as communities. The change in what it means when we believe in ourselves. That’s climate change I can believe in.

We have to have values going forward even as things change.

We must remain human, as Tim DeChristopher said last Power Shift, as the climate changes.

So what do we have to do now?

We have to do what feels right.
Look, I’m not an organizer. I can’t organize a sock drawer.  I don’t even have a sock drawer. Some of you know what I’m talking about.
But I can make a film.  I can do that.  So that’s what I did.
And you have to enter this movement in whatever creative way your individuality summons you to.

But that’s not all.

You have to be a foot soldier. You have to show up. When Bill McKibben and Naomi Klein told me come and show up in front of the White House and get arrested to stop the Keystone XL, I showed up. 

And when the great organizers of this movement call upon us to stand in Illinois, to stand in front of the drilling rigs before they roll in, when we pledge to defend that home state of Obama and make it an issue for him, we have to show up.

When our democratic candidates in the state of Pennsylvania, we have 6,000 gas wells in Pennsylvania and 1,000 families petition to the DEP with water contamination, and not a single democratic candidate running right now for governor supports what 62% of Pennsylvanians support, which is a moratorium on all gas drilling and fracking in the state of Pennsylvania, when those democratic candidates don’t stand up for the majority of the people, when the organizers call upon you to bird-dog those candidates, those men and women seeking to represent Pennsylvania, you bird-dog them until they support the moratorium.   

Because if we are not in the streets, we aren’t anything.

I know movies don’t change the world. Our own individuality is a small part of this. Organizing changes the world. Showing up changes the world.

If we can find a way to take those great collective actions, I know that you will write a great story. You will write a great song, like the girl right before me. I know that you’re going to write a great history and change the world. 

Thank you.

END TEXT

We’ll be posting a couple times a week here, sharing posts from folks we met on the road, updates from the subjects of Gasland and Gasland Part II and a lot of pictures and stories of things we experienced on the road. 

But we also want to hear from you. Send me an email at screenings@gaslandthemovie.com if you want to us to share your story. 

On this day we have to remember those who died  and those who lost everything.

But more than just remembrance, we have to realize what it means.
We have to end our dependency on fossil fuels.
Unless we shift to renewables, events like Sandy will become more and more common
and our civilization will rush into one state of emergency after another.

Please take a look at my short film, made a few weeks after Sandy hit last year
and take a moment to contemplate.  The film features Bill McKibben, Occupy Sandy volunteers and
many brave and inspiring victims of the storm.

OCCUPY SANDY from JFOX on Vimeo.

But don’t just click and move on.  Take action now.

Sign up for our alerts to fight fracking.

Of course, we’re known for our feature films like GASLAND I and II but our short projects, which are always independent and not funded by a major studio, are sometimes just as important.  We will continue to make new work and share it with you here on our blog. We will also feature blogposts from folks around the world that are fighting against fracking that we think will inspire you.

Our blog and short works need funding. Please donate so that we can continue to make short films like Occupy Sandy in the future.

We are striving to continue to bring you this reporting

Thanks,
Josh

I’m calling on Governor Hickenlooper to immediately enact a statewide ban on all extractive mining operations/Fracking until such time all completed wells in Colorado are just inspected in accordance with flood plain regulations. Current setbacks from water ways have unequivocally proven they do not prevent adverse impacts. This oversight must be immediately addressed on every oil & gas well pad in the state. The horrific environmental and human health catastrophe from the spills & releases from subsurface flow lines, crud oil and  liquid waste tanks must be immediately evaluated and mitigated. There is also a high probability of well casing failures due to the waters seeping down around the annuli and must be an immediate issue of concern.

Pipes were shown broken with what appeared to be bubbling methane releases in numerous areas. The waters are certain to contain BTEX and other dangerous chemicals. Organic farms have been affected by these very waters. Cattle have been pushed up onto small areas with no safe water to drink.

The areas along the South Platte River are destroyed beyond measure and the GOGCC and the industry should be fully held accountable for failing to prevent adverse impacts to the environment and human health.

An immediate statewide moratorium is a sound decision considering the current state rules and regulations are highly inadequate.

–

Shane Davis
@fractivist
Regional Campaign Director – GASLAND

I’ve heard Josh talk about how scary and lonely it felt when the gas industry first came knocking on his door on more than one occasion.

But then a strong, passionate community rose up, and he realized that he wasn’t alone.

We’re all in this together. Our hearts all sink when we see families like the Fentons and Lipskys suffering because of drilling. Our spirits all rise when we see areas like Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania or Longmont, Colorado achieve a ban. And our eyes have all been glued to the battle going on in Balcombe, UK because their fight is our fight.

Tomorrow we’ll screen for the European Parliament, and it’s never been more clear to us how connected we all are. Walking down the street of Brussels we fortuitously bumped into activist from Bulgaria and New York. Talking to them, the similarities between the movements going on across the globe reveals a connectivity that transcends borders.

Below is a post we wanted to share from Frack Off, a group of activist on the front lines of the fight in Balcombe. They’ve shown an amazing amount of strength and tenacity that we can all learn from and take to heart in our own towns and cities because as they so perfectly stated, their’s is just one battle in a global struggle.

-Lee Ziesche, Gasland Grassroots Coordinator

The sleepy village of Balcombe in West Sussex has until recently not been a place you would associate with industrial development. The surrounding countryside is among the most picturesque you will see out of the train window on the line between London and the seaside town of Brighton. This has all changed since fracking company, Cuadrilla Resources, infamous for the earthquakes it caused when it fracked the first and so far only shale gas well in the UK, set its sights on the village. Cuadrilla wants to drill a shale oil exploration well in Balcombe, targeting a similar formation to the Bakken Shale in North Dakota, but at a much shallower depth.

When local residents realised what was happening the company mobilised its PR machine to win them over. However a public meeting in the village in January 2012 saw Cuadrilla’s management besieged by 300 angry locals, and the company have since avoided similar events. The company has pressed on and with all bureaucratic options for resistance exhausted, a call-out was made for people to gather outside the site when the first equipment arrived. So began the community blockade that has so far lasted over a month. People and groups from across Sussex and the UK have rallied round in support and it is now settling down into a war of attrition, similar to that which ultimately defeated plans for a massive road building program which threatened to carve up the countryside in the early 1990s.

While Cuadrilla have not published any estimates of how much shale oil there might be, a recent report by the US Energy Information Agency (EIA) suggests there could be up to 700 million barrels in the Weald Basin, mostly in Sussex. Given the typical low total production of a shale oil well this would require around 5,000 wells to be drilled. In the Bakken these wells are now being drilled at density of 4 per square mile, with 1.8 mile long horizontals fractured in up to 40 stages along their length. but rather than a population density of 11 people per square mile in North Dakota, there are 1,100 per square mile in Sussex.

Across the UK a similar wave of unconventional oil and gas extraction is being planned, both Shale an Coal Bed Methane (CBM). As easier to extract fossil fuel resources are depleted by unsustainable levels of energy consumption the system is resorting ever more extreme methods to feed itself. As extraction effort grows the pollution, social disruption and the fraction of the economy that must be devoted to energy extraction are also increasing. Licences are also being given away for Underground Coal Gasification (UCG), an insane technique which involves setting fire to coal seams underground and piping the resulting gases to the surface.

Globally the picture is equally bleak, with extreme energy threatening to spread across the planet. Spare a thought for farmers in West Bengal, India already under massive stress from climate change and globalisation, where a huge wave of CBM wells are now planned. These unconventional fossil fuels are also extra carbon which we cannot possibly afford to burn and avert catastrophic climate change. This fight is not about any one technology or country, but about the whole future direction of human society. Will we descend into a extreme energy nightmare where we live, and die, in the shadow of vast energy extraction projects which mainly exist to feed themselves. Or can communities across the planet revolt against the horrific future that is planned from them and take a different course.

-Frack Off UK

From day one, it’s been people like you at the heart of this movement. You’ve become the inspiration that keeps us going and the reason GASLAND Part II exists.

But we’re not done yet. Before we begin our tour this summer, and bring GASLAND Part II to communities across the country, we need your help with two things.

1. Can you reach out to five friends and ask them to join us?

2. Fill out this form and let us know who you are. This movement has grown exponentially since we started, and we need to know which organizations and communities are with us.

Gasland inspired the world to take a closer look at the dangers of fracking, but it’s been supporters like you who have kept it at the forefront of the national debate.

In GASLAND Part II, we have undertaken an unflinching, fearless investigation of the toxic influences polluting our democracy. GASLAND Part II delves even deeper into the corrupt and poisonous world of hydraulic fracturing, exposing the forces desperately working to keep us addicted to the shrinking resources of the fossil fuel industries.

Ultimately, GASLAND Part II calls us to action, demanding that We The People do “The most we can do”, and that we command our elected officials to pursue a future we can all live in.

You can answer that call right now.

Ask five friends to join us today. We’ll keep them updated on screenings and ways to get involved.

And if you’ve been involved all along, fill out this form so we know where we stand and how best to support the incredible movement you’ve built.

Love,
Josh and The GASLAND Team

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