WHAT THE FRACK: Watch Gasland tonight at Mugshots

If you still don't know what fracking is, the Oscar-nominated Gasland is a good place to start figuring it out.

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WHAT THE FRACK: Watch Gasland tonight at Mugshots

POSTED: Wednesday, April 13, 2011, 4:00 PM

Filed Under: Movies

If you still don't know what fracking is, the Oscar-nominated Gasland is a good place to start figuring it out. Writer/director Josh Fox’s 2010 documentary looks at the hydraulic drilling process developed by Haliburton to pull natural gas out of the ground.

That wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the companies executing said frack don’t really say much to the landowners from whom they're buying fracking land. A lucrative offer from an energy company to lease their property comes with little or no explanation until their land is raped and water is flammable. Some would say becoming an energy superpower is worth most inconveniences. Then again, some would say that all Hitler wanted to do was better the roads and septic systems of Germany. From Texas to Pennsylvania, drilling companies are buying up properties in anticipation of a drilling boom and finding legal loopholes to inject toxins into the ground. Adding insult to possible injury is the fact that our government is allowing the natural gas industry to profit at $2 billion annually while but paying zero tax. Contrast that with education budget cuts, the recent decision to neuter DEP Field Inspectors by not allowing them to give violations to drillers illegally dumping and the current findings of a study showing that natural gas may be dirtier than coal — oy.

Iris Marie Bloom from Protecting Our Waters will give a 15-minute intro, and there’ll be a Keynote outro from David Masur of PennEnvironment from Harrisburg. Go get educated. (To read more about fracking, visit The Naked City blog, category: FrackTrack.)

Gasland screens Wed., April 13, 6:30 p.m., free, Mugshots Coffeeshop & Cafe, 2106 Fairmount Ave., mugshotscoffeehouse.com.

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