Is Louisiana poised for another energy-environment crisis over natural gas?

Carol Forsloff - As if oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico weren't enough, Louisiana has gone down the road in its north and central areas to natural gas, something that critics say can do serious harm to the environment and the drinking water.

Natchitoches, Louisiana, especially in the Parish where the town resides, up to Shreveport and beyond in areas of Arkansas and Texas, spreads the Haynesville Shale.  For the past several years folks have gathered in corner cafes, town hall-type meetings, and private homes to give a rousing welcome to the gas guys who came to town flashing green for the go with gas.  The Haynesville Shale is a large expanse of territory with natural gas reserves, a major find for energy guys with bucks to flash in front of the poor, who grab without thinking or knowing what they have traded away.But did anyone bother to check if this gas prize offer was another win for Big Oil and Gas or another way to bamboozle folks into believing they would be going to the Promised Land, when a kind of hell might be closer to the truth.  And the Prophet leading folks away from the clean, green way of heaven's path, is T.Boone Pickens, the Big Oil guy with a cynical smile telling folks they are foolish if they don't follow the way he directs, as he has recently been seen with Larry King on CNN doing these days.

Pickens made his money in the oil game; now he and his buddies are moving along with natural gas and anything that keeps the game going even as the regular guys are losing.  It's like gambling for sure, but again it is your money or your life that is at stake.

Film director Josh Fox of Gasland grew up in rural Pennsylvania on the Delaware River, which sits above the natural gas-rich Marcellus shale formation deep underground. When he was offered $100,000 to lease his property for natural gas exploration, Fox decided to chronicle drilling’s impact on the American landscape and its people.  He did what other people ought to do and asked some hard questions.  And when he got answers, he made them into a film.

His film aired on June 21 at 9:00 p.m. EDT, Home Box Office (HBO) with its premiere of the dangers of natural gas exploration.

The Environmental Working Group gives this discussion in a recent press release.  It describes how "Gasland, Fox’s documentary on the dangers of natural gas exploration is being seen by environment and film groups. Writing in Variety, the entertainment industry publication, critic Robert Koehler said, “If a film can ever enact social change, which is rare, the potency of “Gasland” suggests that this may be that film.”

EWG goes on to tell us Gasland has won acclaim on the independent film festival circuit, including taking home the Special Jury prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.

“Gasland’s message is invaluable to our work educating lawmakers and the public on the dangers that unregulated natural gas drilling poses to public health and the environment,” said Dusty Horwitt, senior counsel at Environmental Working Group (EWG).

Horwitt went on to underline the relevance of the film to what is happening in parts of Louisiana.   “Mr. Fox’s film is particularly relevant in its depiction of the impact that unchecked gas drilling has had on the health of rural American families and the callous attitude of industry representatives.”

“I leaned heavily on EWG’s research on natural gas extraction techniques as source material for Gasland,” said Fox. “EWG’s advocacy for safer drilling brings heft to arguments urging lawmakers at the local and national level to address the astounding lack of regulation of natural gas drilling,” Fox said.

According to the film's promotions, what it shows is how natural gas companies have industrialized the Western landscape, punching thousands of wells into pristine lands, injecting toxic chemicals, consuming millions of gallons of water, digging pits for hazardous waste and carving out sprawling road networks. Yet almost uniquely among U.S. industries, oil and gas drillers are exempt from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and other federal environmental laws.

With the discovery of large natural gas reserves in the Marcellus shale, New York, Pennsylvania and other eastern states are now in line to experience similar devastation. As “Gasland” documents, residents of Pennsylvania have already had their drinking water contaminated in areas where drilling took place.

Recent research by EWG has focused on a process known as horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing, which has enabled gas companies to unlock huge new deposits of gas buried in deep shale formations. Known as “fracking,” the process shatters the rock to allow captive gas and oil to flow to the surface. Fracking is used in 90 percent of the nation’s natural gas and oil wells.

In “Drilling Around the Law,” , EWG showed that drilling companies are skirting federal law and injecting toxic petroleum distillates into thousands of wells, threatening drinking water supplies from Pennsylvania to Wyoming. Federal and state regulators, meanwhile, largely look the other way.

A report titled “Free Pass for Oil and Gas in the American West,” , documented that the boom in unregulated oil and natural gas exploration across the West poses a threat to public health and the environment. Exclusive EWG maps detailed drilling activity county by county.

EWG Safe Drinking Water Fact Sheet Produced in Conjunction with Earthworks that show the problems with hydraulic fracturing.

Those problems are among those faced by a state where there are many poor people with land they hope to sell or lease to oil companies for drilling natural gas.

And the worry over contaminants in the water seems not to bother those who look to make cash, then leave the state when things go wrong.  The problem is the poorer people, without land and profits, are left with the problems hydraulic fracturing may cause.

EWF observes that industry often claims there is no evidence that hydraulic fracturing has ever contaminated drinking water, but people from Pennsylvania to Wyoming have clearly documented that their water was affected.

North and central Louisiana have been relatively untouched before the natural gas onslaught, standing pure in the beauty of landscape and natural wonders, even as its southern borders have high cancer rates, water pollution and now oil spewing into its coastal waters.

It will face in its future the filth of natural gas, even as the politicians have praised its future, leading people again down the road to environmental devastation, according to "Gasland" producers and environmental groups unless films like "Gasland" and the lessons from the problems related to deepwater drilling can finally be learned.

New Orleans neighbors to the north may one day mourn for their way of life even as people mourn in the Gulf of Mexico that could be impacted negatively by natural gas  as the drilling  is well on its way right now.