it's a distance. and this is good to have your company today just in time for the headlines now but ten candidates face off in the french presidential election but both the radical left and right are expected to make strong gains. under way economic misfortune bruising austerity and failed promises leave. the u.n. security council unites in ordering the deployment of a massive observer mission to syria with russia in the u.s. the over the details of the move a moscow hopes the monitors can oversee a u.n. brokered peace plan for washington and warns it may still take unilateral action against damascus. bahrain is on high alert to safeguard the formula one grand

prix which is racing ahead despite a wave of anti-government protests on the brutal crackdown that's left at least one person dead tens of thousands of taken to the streets to demand immediate democratic reform. and a big impact on the small screen in the world to watch as closely as whistleblower julian a talk show makes his debut right here on artsy giving voice to those ostracized by the mainstream media the show is already stirring up a range of global reaction. to stay with us if you can hear a lot see in our. opening examination of the consequences of the conflicts that can arise between landowners on the untouchable energy companies in america a special report right. in two thousand and four some residents in garfield county began to complain if they were getting sick as a result of the drilling activities in their neighborhoods. a young woman from sils

laura amos was one of the earliest and loudest voices. as everyone in this room probably knows my ground water has been contaminated with methane williamsport yes a lot of people in this room with contamination and pollution issues so who then is responsible to me for that that loss of my welfare if it's not you the gas commission if a well is drilled next to your residence order near your residence within the legal setbacks and there's a perceived or real impact on the property value and we don't address that in two thousand and one gas wells were drilled using the fracking technique a mere five hundred feet from the amos home. underground the drilling breached their water well causing their drinking water to fill with gray sediment and is like soda pop. the colorado oil and gas conservation commission tested the water

well and found methane and said it was safe for they warned the emesis to keep a window open so the methane gas wouldn't build up and cause an explosion in their home they amos's stopped drinking the water but continued to bathe in it she later found out that a chemical that had been used in the two thousand and one fracking has been linked to adrenal gland tumors. when she went to end canada they denied using it on that well or any other months later the oil and gas commission admittedly that had been used after all. after years of mounting medical bills devalued property and diminishing options laura agreed to a monetary settlement with and can of course. aeration the company responsible for her problems. the settlement stipulated she stopped telling her story publicly which is why she was not interviewed for this film many family stories like hers

will never be told because of company settlements that require silence. let's go around the trampoline in spite of her well explosion and fire. has stayed in her house surrounded by her children and grandchildren. this kind of helps me gives me a little more steady ness and so i can grab something you know they were doing ok as long as the regs on that weren't there and i was just working a while and you still go out with smells and that i just couldn't be outside it wasn't. then they brought in the temporary rig because they were having problems with one of the holes i think and then the smells all started up again as they were

doing a fracking and it all boils right over here we have one back there behind us we had two on the side here they're all working. flaring gas and much more well after the fire whatever was there or just burned and came right at me you know it was like somebody had just. chemicals on me fine leg from stand anymore and monday my husband took me to see room at the hospital. i had pretty my grandkids and one great. body. yeah they've been pretty sick they've had colds as my girls. in fact. liam's as much really bad he's on four different medicines basically we found that if you were to take all of the chemicals that are used in a particular state always where you see the highest percentage of possible health

effects it's always skin irritation you're occasion was during sinuses as coughing and then this effect will sensitizing which is good thirty second he still lives on dry hollow road shortly after this interview d's son and daughter in law and their four children moved out of the state when they moved their respiratory problems disappeared. in two thousand and four the bush cheney administration's environmental protection agency asserted that fracturing does not threaten drinking water this was childish by a thirty year e.p.a. environmental engineer weston wilson acting under protected whistleblower status the former chairman and c.e.o. of halliburton cheney within a few months of coming into office and as vice president he was pressuring the

administrator of a christie todd whitman to exempt hydraulic fracking from safety regulation my own point of view as a technician. i just thought it a very i'm arming that e.t.a. technically had described how toxic these materials are toxic at the point of injection and still come out with a summary that says they don't need to be reported or regulated. and that led me in the fall of zero four to object on technical grounds then the inspector general of e.p.a. began an investigation of my complaints. and several months into that congress took the report from e.p.a. saying that fracking did not present a risk along with other information and exempted hydraulic fracking from regulation on the safe drinking water act that lays you and i as the american public in this position we cannot know what the industry injects in our land

we it is exempt from being reported. down the colorado river about nine miles to the west of silt is the town of rifle. fully out then on thought. this is one of the one was. this is before. the problems before with the rifle this is right in the tree and when you marry like

a hundred years. it's been a worse fifteen years i'm fifty four says fifty nine. to use his tunes to. turn the tradition. in one thousand nine hundred three chris and steve move all the decided to leave california to move to colorado we both got laid off from our work because we both volunteered to be laid off because we wanted to get out of california move to colorado where it was beautiful and clean air and clean water they found themselves in garfield county looking for a new home there's critics. in nineteen ninety five a bought their dream house a fixer upper in a rural neighborhood outside rifle range with

a place and we plan to stay there for. it was shortly after chris and steve moved in the drilling rigs began to appear on some of their neighbors land and in the surrounding hills and everything changed. crisper get in the shower. her skin turned bright red i think. it hurt her skin it was it was burning fire she was well steve began to develop symptoms as well i feel dizzy. i get well the nose is priss health began to deteriorate rapidly she began losing her sight had severe headaches and had pain in her hands and feet there were two surgeries to remove or to tarry tumor and she developed a rare neurological speech impairment but i think i think i'll go through all the same. place. i've had several patients who have.

been. having so tim's since the time the were exposed to world gas exploration near their homes these are all people in a small cost for. last year e.p.a. got several citizens requests from garfield county and the citizens were saying. gosh my drinking water might be contaminated by this practice or the air we breathe might be affected e.p.a. can you look into it e.p.a. should of. myself and another staff person we had prepared the letters we were we were ready to write to the colorado oil and gas commission that we felt that this practice cause him in a substantial risk to public drinking water source and that e.p.a. was going to take over the investigation however soon as we got that through our political appointee supervisors they canceled that investigation so e.p.a. did not investigate the legitimate complaints from citizens and garfield county. if

you live in or in a rural residential area and you were in a low lying area your house was in a low lying area they could accumulate the gases when they come off the tank battery and so forth you may be reading those for twelve hours a day one of the concerns of the agency with respect to the oil and gas industry is how much both organic carbon and how much volatile gases come from the industry especially from storage of oil or storage of gas. last summer in an effort to track down how much volatile organic carbon was coming from the oil and gas industry a unique study was undertaken by u.p.s. and e.p.a. brought in some infrared cameras. and turned them towards these oil and gas facilities and under infrared light. the old organic commissions were visible.

they look like a. mirage. and so one could see in this interview bed camera the amount of old organic carbon coming off these storage tanks. everywhere. is drilled into a strait and it has organic chemicals. oil is a mixture of these very heavy organics but it's a range from these kind of greasy very heavy oily stuff to stuff which is quite those materials rapparee very quickly all those are potentially toxic but we don't know to what extent. many of them are dangerous ethylene for instance is converted in humans to ethylene oxide and ethylene oxide is of course senator besides the drilling in their immediate neighborhood christen stever directly downwind what was

becoming a major drilling field exposing them to even higher levels of airborne toxins. another source of possible exposure was a waste water treatment facility located across the river from their home. in one nine hundred ninety seven as chris is symptoms were getting worse a water will near them of all these was blown out and contaminated by drilling. according to state records on september fifteenth one thousand nine hundred ninety seven barrett resources lost well control drilling the burned clogged gas well the gas company told everybody not to drink the water and they actually started delivering water to us then they came back and told us that your water safe to drink so we started drinking the water there. when the exposure is through the water pathway people are usually given an alternate drinking water supply you don't

think of it but there are a lot of sources of water vapor in the house your dishwasher every time you flush the toilet and you breathe it in. through your skin your dose of the volatile organic compounds from the the shower water will be several times the dose you would have gotten from the drinking water after we started thinking. that a glass of water. there was a little oil slick. in desperation chris and steve moved to grand junction colorado abandoning their home and a place that had been their dream. just. you know. and it was four hundred forty thousand dollars and we just walked away from it. there are no official statistics tracking people who have moved away because of the effects of gas and oil development. in the two colorado communities profiled in this film

the impact has been profound. there is a record of at least nine dry hole families who formally complained about the drilling and they have moved away. some were afraid some were sick all were exhausted by their fight with the industry. chris and steve had seen the same thing in their neighborhood in rifle i think almost all of our neighbors who were. people that occupy the houses now. people who work for the. there's a growing resistance on the part of people who live in the path of drilling.

that living with this development has affected our lives in nearly every way imaginable with other recourse some landowners have become activists. i think there's no question that people are getting sick from the environmental effects of gas exploration and production throughout the united states and what's striking is when you ask them what their symptoms are it's the same in one area. as it is in another area. gas states like new mexico and colorado are caught between intense pressure from the federal government to lease more land for drilling and the desire to protect the land and their citizens. in june of two

thousand and seven newly elected colorado governor bill ritter is faced with a critical confrontation with the bureau of land management and agency of the interior parts they had authorized more than fifteen hundred new gas wells on the roan plateau one of the last pristine areas and garfield county we just started with a very modest request a hundred twenty days for a new administration and we were turned down and we don't think twenty four days is enough for us to be able to really have a thoughtful and. response is there's too much that we don't know for us to be able to really respond in a very short amount of time so that's why i'm going to push very hard with secretary kempthorne and i ask him to grant the governor the request the governor has made of him. in the summer of two thousand and eight in spite of protests from governor ritter and colorado legislators and the bureau of land management went

ahead with the federal auction of leases on the rhone plateau. the entire top of the plateau fifty five thousand acres it was leased nearly fifteen thousand citizens sent protest letters but the bureau found the protests to be without merit and issued the leases anyway our goal is ciro incidents and zero impact on the environment and there. were not there obviously. we do have injuries we do have still. but we try to prevent them or we do the best we can sign in our game shows them off across the road anywhere i mean you know that's not how it's not in writing just this natural gas went out in a while are also natural gas on the market interest. today's hearing will examine loopholes in federal health and environmental protections that are exploited by the oil and gas industry as children we all learned about basic

fairness and we know that it's not just not fair when someone gets to play by different rules than the rest of us but as we learned today there is one set of environmental rules for the oil and gas industry and a different set of rules for the rest of america the federal government's got to be involved in that this isn't something that the states can do definitely because this chemical testing is expensive states don't have the money would you think it would be hard to find these chemicals if you waited for years to sample them definitely yes why does it you know why take so long to do the testing. because this isn't what you traditionally test for are we not doing enough basic research into this area we are not there slipping through our safety net truly. there have been many attempts to create more balance between the interests of

industry and those of surface owners. to impart to the activism of landowners in colorado a new mexico new legislation was passed and both states giving landowners some new rights but for industry it is still essentially business as usual the pace of new drilling continues to accelerate unabated attempts at regulatory change at the federal level have not been as successful the energy bill was passed the house of representatives in two thousand and seven did include additional protections for surface owners when the oil and gas is owned by the federal government. that those provisions unfortunately did not make it into law. in the spring of two thousand and seven governor bill ritter signed one of the new colorado bills in change the makeup of the state commission that regulates the industry the ceremony was attended by some of the residents of garfield county i

live in boise here. and these are my hands whom are from here oh yeah a lot of it's all over again are. still thirty eight forty one maybe one of the most significant things that we accomplished in this legislative session to reorganize the current oil and gas conservation commission we believe it brings a better balance to the commission so that's not dominated by any one interest group but we're going to be responsible as we move forward but to be mindful of the impact is the number of drilling applications time as the number of impact complaints climb as well. as. half of the state of colorado or more sense about the gas bearings and on and so. this is an issue that will be with us for many many years to come and the

decisions that we make today are going to define. how this role transpire over the next twenty years. and what the people of the state i hope the people the state look at the fact that today we have close to five thousand wells have been drilled that's just in the northwestern area and if you look down the road fifteen years and you've got traffic leaving sixty thousand wells sixty thousand wells put in said to. williams is going to have their respect. you participate in your project. and start looking over your back feel like. you'd like to know that. we transferred. you know at radio shack over. this if you're poor and i don't know if you were thinking about

it ever and they treated it right. as in the rocky mountains the growth of domestic drilling is beginning to impact people and places across america in ways never imagined oil companies are seeking new leases in thirty two states since ninety nine hundred hundreds of thousands of new wells are drilled and the pace of development is excel arabian. incredibly drilling is now planned in the new york city watershed which provides drinking water to millions. but some feel it doesn't have to be this way. technology is available for industry to comply with these lines and to conduct their business in a much cleaner it's often affordable and it's often profitable. we can make them do

it better the profits now in the industry are so high that there's no reason why they can't start using some new technology develop a new technology to capture the escaping gas and videos seize but also to do something with that water. when a catcher is has to substances carry they can also capture more of their saleable product we need data and we need data on animals we need data on humans we need data on the population and that requires again money a plan you know and doing. this for one or two lives and listen does serve the country through alternative energy we all use the energy we all know we need energy there are a lot better ways we could do energy and i'd like to see us move towards

a clean energy future which most important is for congress to close these loopholes and to hold the oil and gas industry in the same standards as other industries if the industry way fifteen years down the road where you need answering some very hard questions to a jury and to a number of plaintiffs saying you know when it was so inexpensive that put some of these pollution control equipment and practices on your operation why when you knew that there were sicknesses why didn't you do it.

since jack could come to standup. now can cause a fall. to fun. to be standing. in the car to come up. with you where. it comes to get. this in front of the sun spoiling. her love. how to use a. piece of good sun to reach out. beyond our confidence to do the. same. with us john.

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