Gasland shale gas scare proven wrong by EPA

Remember the main scare claim in the film Gasland?: 


"A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire." 


The leftist and liberal media and critics went out of their way to praise this "documentary":

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

Nominated for Best Documentary OSCAR 2011
Won EMMY for Best Non Fiction Directing
Nominated for 4 Emmy Awards including Best Doc, Writer, Director and Camera
Nominated for Best Documentary Screenplay Writer’s Guild of America
Won Planet Defender Award (Josh Fox) from Rock the Earth
Won Manayunk Eco-Champion Award (Josh Fox)
Won Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary
Won John Lennon/ Yoko Ono Peace Prize 2010 (Josh Fox)
Won Citizens Campaign for the Environment Equinox Award (Josh Fox)
Won best graphic design Cinema Eye awards
Nominated for IDA Pare Lorentz Award
Won Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize
Won Big Sky Film Fest Artistic Vision Award
Won Yale Environmental Film Fest Grand Jury Prize
Won Sarasota International Film Fest Special Jury Prize
Won Traverse City Film Festival Best Environmental Documentary
Listed as one of Current TV 50 Docs to see before you die 
Listed as Outside Magazine 25 most influential Docs of all time
Recipient of numerous congressional, state, local and county citations and proclamations

PRESS REVIEWS

"...one of the most effective and expressive environmental films of recent years." - Variety

"On the want-to-see- scale, GASLAND tops the list" - Washington Post

Riveting - LA Weekly

"GASLAND just might be the best film of the year." - The Huffington Post

"Over the past 8 days I was lucky enough to view 40 films...The most important film I saw was the documentary GASLAND...This examination of air quality and more specifically drinking water under attack from NYC to Ft. Worth was very eye opening." - USA TODAY

GASLAND is "well done. It holds people's attention. And it could block our industry." - Oil and Gas Journal President of the Natural Gas Supply Association

"VOLCANIC…With humor and inquisitiveness, Fox has delivered 2010's most alarming wake-up call." - Hammer To Nail

"This is the best documentary I have ever seen, because of Josh Fox's wonderful revealing story. The narration is infused with humor, as Fox presents indisputable evidence of the fracking's disastrous effect on America. He...displays the bipartisan nature of the issue. This is unflinching, unrelenting, and unbiased storytelling. The best film I've seen at Sundance." - The Mixed Tape

"When something emerges like Josh Fox's GASLAND, a work of art which also happens to educate quite effectively...this is why festivals, even the big ones, are capable of surprises, because wonderful things do seep through the cracks. Precisely because it was purely personal...and that it was as concerned with aesthetic matters as issues, GASLAND may also be some ideal of that cherished sub-genre in many festival circles, the environmental film, which tends to leave art behind for the topic it's addressing." - Cinemascope

"...one of the most effective and expressive environmental films of recent years." - Variety 


Reality check: 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said drinking water is safe to consume in a small Pennsylvania town that has attracted national attention after residents complained about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas. 

The EPA has completed testing water at 61 homes in Dimock, Pennsylvania, where residents have complained since 2009 of cloudy, foul-smelling water after Cabot Oil & Gas drilled for gas nearby.


"This set of sampling did not show levels of contaminants that would give EPA reason to take further action," Roy Seneca, a spokesman for the regional EPA office, said about the final set of data released Friday. 

The agency released data for only 59 of the homes as they could not contact residents at two of them. 

Dimock became ground zero for the debate about fracking after Josh Fox, the director of Oscar-nominated 2010 documentary called "Gasland," visited the town and met residents who feared their water was contaminated by the drilling. 


Techniques including fracking have revolutionized the U.S. natural gas industry by giving companies access to vast new reserves that could supply the country's demand for 100 years, according to the industry.

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Cabot spokesman George Stark said any contaminants found in the tests "are more likely indicative of naturally-occurring background levels or other unrelated activities." 

Read the entire article here

The Gasland hoax has seriously damaged shale gas exploration - the best thing that has happened in the US economy in decades - not only in the US, but all over the world. But if you think that the hoaxters behind the film, or their leftist and liberal envirofundamentalist supporters will ever apologize for their misinformation campaign, I am afraid you are going to be disappointed.