Haze surrounding home during fracking near Pavilion, Wyoming. Photo by John Fenton.

“Whoa, that’s not supposed to happen.” Thus spoke Josh Fox, master of the understatement, after he witnessed a man, whose house neighbors a natural gas well, light his kitchen tap water on fire. And by “fire” I don’t mean a delicate tongue of flame like on a candlestick: it’s an honest-to-goodness fireball that comes blazing out of that tap. And it happens not once but multiple times in different homes across the country in Fox’s recently-released documentary on hydraulic fracturing called Gasland. Read more

Anyone who wants to know more about the public health dangers of oil and gas  development simply must catch HBO’s documentary ‘Gasland’ when it premieres this Monday, June 21 at 9pm EDT. In this Sundance award winning film, Gasland filmmaker Josh Fox traveled throughout the United States to document the impacts of natural gas development on local communities and drinking water. What he finds is alarming.  Read more

Smokey Mountains, North Carolina. Courtesy of NPS.

This feature was first published in the 2008 Wilderness Magazine. To receive the annual magazine and quarterly newsletters from The Wilderness Society, become a member today! Christopher Percy Collier is a Connecticut writer who has authored three regional guidebooks and has had stories published by National Geographic Traveler, Outside, and numerous other magazines. By Christopher Percy Collier Read more