Filming Fracking

Some injustices in life make us so incredibly frustrated!  We feel helpless and wonder what we can do to make a difference.  Fracking is one of those injustices. 

We are producing a documentary for a local farm.  The owner of the farm called us recently and asked us if we would be open to producing a segment about her brother, Ed.  Ed is a Vietnam veteran who suffers from PTSD.  A number of years ago he moved to a beautiful parcel of land in northern PA to live in peace.

His peace was shattered when in 2009 Shell Oil Company began fracking on two sides of his property.  Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is a means of natural gas extraction in which millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are injected under high pressure into a well.

We traveled to Ed’s home in Tioga County, an area of Pennsylvania where fracking is prevalent.  The first thing we noticed as we neared his property was the unbelievable number of trucks – tractor trailers, pickups, dump trucks clogging the roads and the dust and grime coating the bucolic town of Wellsboro, near which Ed’s property is located.

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Even more devastating is the human toll of this technology.  Our hearts broke as Ed told us his story. We feel privileged to have played a small part in getting the word out about fracking and its destruction, not only of the pristine environment of our beautiful state of Pennsylvania, but of the lives of its residents.

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