This documentary is written and directed by Josh Fox. He focuses on communities in the United States that are affected by natural gas drilling and, specifically, a method of horizontal drilling into shale formations known as hydraulic fracturing.
Fox narrates his reception of a letter in May, 2008, from a natural gas company offering to lease his family’s land in Milanville, Pennsylvania for $100,000 to drill for gas. Fox then set out to see how communities are being affected in the west where a natural gas drilling boom has been underway for the last decade.
Throughout the documentary, Fox reached out to scientists, politicians, and gas industry executives and ultimately found himself in the halls of Congress as a subcommittee was discussing the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act, “a bill to amend the Safe Drinking Water Act to repeal a certain exemption for hydraulic fracturing”. Hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
