The Charleston Gazette ran a front page story about the exploding number of gas wells being dug in West Virginia because of the Marcellus Shale today. Last night HBO premiered a film called “Gasland” about a new film that explores the issues concerning gas well drilling around the country, getting stories on NPR and elsewhere. Below is my description of the film that I will use to create my 2011 list of “New Films on WV and Appalachia” for Goldenseal magazine next summer. (I did watch a screener of the film last week.) 

GASLAND
2010 95 mins. International WOW Company
Pennsylvania filmmaker Josh Fox explores the realities of deep-well digging for natural gas around the country. He was offered $100,000 to sign a lease allowing a local company to dig gas wells on his property in northern Pa. He decides to explore what has happened to other people in 25 other states where “fracking,” a term for this new form of gas well digging, has taken place. He finds tap water that is flammable, people and animals dying with horrible diseases including cancer, and the fact that Vice President Cheney, at his infamous secret energy meeting that took place at the beginning of the Bush Administration, had any kind of federal regulation of “fracking” removed from the laws. ( There are at least 500 different chemicals in the fracking solution that is pumped in to the ground in millions of gallons.) The Marcellus Shale, under Fox’s home and all of West Virginia, has been called “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.” The film won the special jury award for documentary films at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It premiered on HBO on June 21, 2010. Website - http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/

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