EcoWatch Interviews Public Herald About Fracking & Triple Divide

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With high-profile activists like Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon taking a stand against fracking, the controversial drilling practice has been pulled from the periphery and placed in the public's main line-of-sight at a scale sparking movement from Hollywood. Promised Land, a film starring Matt Damon as a salesman for a natural gas company, hits theaters tonight, lending cinematic drama to the issue of fracking. While the large-scale exposure is valuable, Melissa Troutman, co-creator of another film on fracking, is careful to iterate an important fact, "Promised Land is a story, but this [Triple Divide] is a true story." Triple Divide, a documentary by Joshua Pribanic and Melissa Troutman of Public Herald, carefully investigates the effects of fracking in the Marcellus Shale Region of Pennsylvania from the ground up, focusing its lens on the true accounts of neighbors who have lost their water well to contamination from drilling, and farmers, like the ones in Promised Land, who have lost their land to pollution from a nearby well pad. In their first live interview about the film, journalists Joshua and Melissa discussed Triple Divide and the impact of fracking with Stefanie Spear, Founder and Editor of EcoWatch, a news service designed to promote and build a community of grassroots environmental activism. You can watch the full interview above or at EcoWatch.

North Dakota’s Fracking Spills a ‘Significant Problem’

In situ burn at a crude oil spill on a wetland in Mountrail County, North Dakota. photo: USFWS (flickr)

North Dakota’s Oil Boom Brings Damage Along With Prosperity by Nicholas Kusnetz for ProPublica Oil drilling has sparked a frenzied prosperity in Jeff Keller’s formerly quiet corner of western North Dakota in recent years, bringing an infusion of jobs and [...]

Keystone XL Pipeline Benefits Questioned by Cornell University Study

Keystone XL demonstration, White House,8-23-2011. photo: Josh Lopez (Wikimedia Commons)

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Video Investigations: June 2011

A compilation of video investigations gathered by The Erie Wire week-to-week every month. For more information on online investigative reports look to our “Investigative Newswire” feed uploaded in real-time on the bottom left of every page. If you have a story to contribute to these reports; please use the author’s email in the right column.

Failing Infrastructure Puts Nation At Risk

Breakdown: Traveling Dangerously in America A Faulty Safety System – Over the past 43 years, the National Transportation Safety Board has issued more than 13,000 recommendations to make travel safer. These recommendations are often delayed or ignored as accidents [...]