American theatre director Josh Fox didn’t set out to make a film, much less star in one. But when he received a letter offering him $100,000 in exchange for allowing some natural gas wells to be sunk on his farm in a pristine river valley in Pennsylvania, he decided to ask around.
What the director of Gasland discovered was shocking – and, he insists, of more than passing relevance to Australians as we embark on a future in which natural gas is touted as a ‘‘clean’’ alternative to oil and coal.
Fox found there are more than 500,000 natural gas wells across the US, many tapped using a process called hydraulic fracturing, or ‘‘fracking’’.
In this, a mix of highly toxic chemicals and water is pumped hundreds of metres underground, forcing the rock to crack, and releasing the natural gas trapped in it.
The problem is, about a third of the liquid stays below ground, and in many of the sites Fox visits in his documentary, it has leached into water supplies, as has the gas itself. People can’t drink the water that comes out of their taps any more – and in some cases they can set it alight.
‘‘This is a huge issue because once you’ve contaminated an aquifer you can’t go back,’’ says Fox, whose documentary screens tonight at Nelson Bay Cinema.
In America, the natural gas industry was granted an exemption from normal environmental controls by the Bush administration in 2005. Halliburton, the oil company of which Dick Cheney was chairman before becoming Bush’s vice-president, is at the forefront of gas exploration.
Most people Fox visits in his rough and ready film live in remote areas, and rely on bore or creek water. But the area near his home that the industry wants to tap is something else: it’s the primary catchment for the greater New York area, supplying water to 16million people.
‘‘Fighting against this is a personal thing, but it’s also something where you look around and you have this immense concern for all these different places,’’ he says.
That extends to Australia, too. According to the Greens, the coal-seam gas industry, as it is called here, is likely to drill up to 40,000 wells in Queensland alone by 2030, with each well occupying at least a hectare of prime agricultural land.
Though the fracking technique used here differs slightly from that covered in Fox’s film, the Greens say there are still risks.
Gasland screens tonight and next Monday at 6.45pm at Nelson Bay Cinema Complex.
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