This dog, Dotty, is the reason why I'm able to talk to you people today.

Because she quit drinking water.

And thus I quit drinking the water and had the water tested.

I said, what in the world do you guys use?

Why is that water dark?

Think about each Wells site is about a $4 million construction project.

This is like winning the lotto.

We're the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, talking about $10 billion of economic activity going on every year.

That has huge impacts on Pittsburgh and many other cities throughout the Marcellus Shale states.

There needs to be controls in what we're doing.

We need energy.

This world and this country has an insatiable desire for energy.

My two dogs kept getting sick and the vet said it has to be something they're eating or drinking.

They ruined all the water cables.

The well was contaminated.

I lost 25% of my cattle.

I had to downsize for them to benefit.

Well, I believe it'll create jobs.

It'll also help us, be less dependent on foreign energy.

And it'll create economic development for our region.

We just moved here, and, this is our first home that we purchased, and I've, we would not have purchased here.

I would know that this was coming, and we looked for it before we came here.

We'd actually looked at Penn Hills, saw that there would be drilling there, and left that area and came here instead.

And I'm worried about multiple things.

What rights do we have as a property owners to protect our property value, to protect our water, to protect ourselves from, you know, our family and our children from developmental issues that may rise.

Means in terms of jobs is, this year we're looking at about 80, 88, 90,000 new jobs coming from the industry.

You know, by 2010 that growing to well over 200,000 by 2020.

So every one of those jobs is creating that additional ripple effect in the economy.

You just think of these environmental disaster.

I don't think we can do it responsibly.

I think to say that there's such a thing as responsible drilling just isn't working.

We just se environmental disasters already.

See these holding ponds?

Catching fire.

Was seeing our waters and trees being polluted.

You know, people, people leasing their lands and then discovering that the whole thing was a lie.

That next to a factory.

The debate is over.

Marcellus shale this rock formation is named for an outcropping of shale nea the town of Marcellus, New York.

But the shale stretches through much of Pennsylvania and as far south as Tennessee.

The shale is located between 5000 and 8000ft below the surface of the Earth.

Geologists have long known about natural gas resources in this shale layer, but recent advancements in the drilling process have attracted new interest in recovering the gas embedded in the shale.

Some believe it will be a huge economic boom to Pennsylvania.

I think it's the biggest opportunity that western Pennsylvania has had in decades.

Others who have to live near drilling sites say it is ruined their water, their lifetime investment in their homes and indeed their lives.

It's definitely divided the community with being a rural area.

You know, you're either for it or against it.

And, you know, some of the farmers with the big farms, they are definitely for it.

They want the money.

But at the cost of the little people who don't want it next door, who are, you know, dealing with issues like my family and recent acquisitions.

Landowners are approached by agents for gas companies and asked to sign a lease for mineral rights.

In other cases, the leases were signed years ago by the previous landowners.

There's a lot more to this than money, and there's a lot more to this than just gas.

It's a big deal and it deserves our attention and it deserves our understanding.

Before we sign anything on the dotted line right now.

My constituents are being solicited by oil company brokers, independent brokers, oil companies themselves to sign away their rights with promises of big money, and they have no legal counsel at their disposal.

Once the gas companies own the land, the recovery begins.

First comes drilling and then a process called fracking, with huge amounts of water forced deep into the ground, fracturing the shale and releasing the gas.

That water is trucked in from streams, rivers, and municipal water supplies and stored in the trucks until needed.

When it's driven into the ground, the water contains a number of chemicals, including benzene, Toluene, and hydrogen sulfide, some of which are known to cause cancer.

It may take as much as a million gallons per frack per well, and there may be 4 to 7 wells on any one site.

Some of the wastewater retrieved from the ground ends up stored in frack ponds.

Landowners complain about leakage, the smell, the noisy drilling and the flaring of excess gas.

We spend a lot of money to build a house in the country and it's worth nothing.

In 2007, Stephanie and Chris Hallowich built their dream home in Hickory, Pennsylvania.

Everything changed when their well water turned brackish, began to smell and started giving the whole family bad rashes.

Our quality of life has greatly changed.

We have to take quick showers.

The kids can't play in the water sprinkler outside on a hot day.

You know you don't realize how much water you consume in a day until you have to pay for it.

Literally gallon by gallon.

The Hallowich family had a 1500 gallon water buffalo installed in their garage with the pump rental.

It cost them about 300 to $500 a month.

They still don't drink the water from the water buffalo because Stephanie says it smells like swimming pool water.

Yeah, I used to have masking tape down it because when we first got it, I had to figure out how much it took when we took showers, how much it would drop.

And at the time we had it still hooked up to the washing machine so I could trac how pretty much budget my water.

So I knew when we were going to get a paycheck and when I could refill the tank, which is pathetic, but I literally had it measured out how much we needed on a daily basis for something that was free in our backyard.

This is our our drinking water.

And these jugs down here are our cooking water for the week that we fill in town at my mom's house.

This is what our wate looks like after it settles out.

And this is what they told us is safe to drink.

Kathryn Klaber is the president and the executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition.

It's the nonprofit group that represents over 100 companies associated with the drilling industry.

The coalition is the public face of Marcellus Shale in regulatory legislation, education and communication matters.

So what is in place right now are very stringent rules under the Clean Water Act, that NPDES program that does not allow any water to be discharged either to a publicly owned treatment works or to any, any waterways without, very strict regulations.

But cattle farmers like Terry Greenwood from Daisytown, Pennsylvania, say that despite all of those regulations, his family has had nothing but problems with their stream and well water tasted like drinking ocean water.

It's so salty you'll spit it back out.

Everything that goes on in the what?

These well sites are subject to OSHA rules and regulations.

DPI says because you're not using that.

Well, that's why it's so salty and you can't drink it and the animals won't drink it.

They know when there's something wrong with the water.

Well, very important to recognize a couple things around that.

First of all, there are about 1.2 million private water wells and springs in the Commonwealth.

The Penn State University had looked at, the state of those private water wells and found that more than 40% of them were contaminated.

This is before anybody even knew what the word Marcellus meant.

I'm losing weight, and we cannot drink the water.

Sometimes it smells.

It's yellow.

So Shirley and Jesse Eakin have lived in the village of Rae, Pennsylvania, for 50 years.

Periodically, they have their water tested and say thei well water was always good until drilling started on the hill above their home.

Now, test results are different.

The water was tested and they say there's bacteria in the water.

And also the DEP came and took samples of it.

But we've never got a report on that.

We've been washing clothes with it.

We've been bathing in it.

We have problems.

We have rashes.

And when I went to the doctors, I have problems with this stomach.

And it's there still yet in the house.

Appliances that use water aren't working.

They started drilling up there in the summer of 2008, and that' when we started having problems.

Our faucet plugged up, water softener went bad.

And when they were fracking, like, trying to get the gas out of the, ground, and when they watere their plants, the garden stopped growing.

Always had wonderful tomatoes there.

But I run my hoses that because in August of last year, first part of August, it started to get dry.

And I water these tomatoes every day.

I water the rest of my garden every day.

Cucumbers, peppers, everything.

By the middle of August, everything died.

It can die completely.

There are some very specific standards as to how you build wells.

That those wells have casing, layers of casing, a steel casing with cement around those various layers.

Have never found that the, hydraulic fracturing fluid or the deep shale gas has been transferred into private water wells.

The official data indicates where water isn't affected.

But bee farmers like Terry Greenwood see a different reality, one that he says could land on your table.

All our calves.

We keep them for one year when they're born, and we sell them to 80 for auction for human consumption.

And the water that was up there, they didn't want to test it.

The spring and the pond DEP say it wasn't for human consumption.

And I said, we sell our cattle for people to eat every year.

Terry believes that Marcellus Shale drilling cost him a whole season when many of his calves were stillborn.

None of the dead cattle you see here made it to market.

They died at birth on Terry's farm and were properly disposed of.

That was one of the calves of died.

That was one that had blue eyes.

There was two of them with blue eyes.

That's when my son brought on the field.

This calf here was a stillborn calf to this one.

Its eyes was pure white.

That calf was dead, too.

It was a stillborn calf and I just took a picture of it.

She stayed with it for about a day and a half.

And then I took the calf away from her.

And that.

That's one of the calves.

My son was holding its eyes open.

It was a stillborn.

Its eyes was blue.

You can see how blue they are.

They don't even look like an eye.

They look like somebody painted.

The eyes are.

They're not even look like an eye.

And nobody can give you a reason for this.

But what you suspect is the water.

It's the water from them drilling and dumping it into the fields.

And the mother cows drank it and all these.

That's why all these cows died.

I don't either understand how, the process of drilling.

And I've been on a lot of sites myself, could have that kind of effect on livestock.

That is not something that I'm.

That I know what that connection could be.

Have you heard these complaints from farmers when the drilling is happening?

Do you respond to them?

That is the Marcellus Shale coalition.

Certainly some of our members are working every day with the landowners that they have entered into contracts with and are having those ongoing discussions with those, any individual landowner who has an issue.

Well, the one Dominion guy says they can get city water up there, but DEP says $500,000 was too much to get you city water up to your house.

I said, well, they ruined my water.

And they said, well, that's too much money for them to have to spend to get you water.

So they're leaving us stranded right there with no water, just a water buffalo right now, until they do something.

So I have to have an attorney to figure out what to tell me what to do.

I don't know what else to do.

Other landowners are also reporting problems.

Ron Gulla bought his property in Hickory with the intention of retiring there.

He says it's a dream that is evaporating before his eyes.

They make a lot of promises that they put everything back better than what it was originally.

And that is so false and so far from the truth.

It's incredible.

This is the entrance of my driveway from McCarroll road, and I paved 500ft of it myself.

And this is my concrete bridge and I had them put a, a, temporary bridge over top of my concrete bridge so that they wouldn't crush the concrete.

But now my driveway is you all know, you drove down and it's full of potholes.

I have about three feet, in the center of, asphalt left.

And there are ruts and potholes, probably 8 to 10in deep.

A Range Resources spokesman would not appear on camera, but said that Ron Gulla and Rang are in litigation, but did say that range offered to buy Ron's land and get him another farm.

Ron says he refused because the new farm range offered had a similar lease for drilling.

65 acres out of that hundre and 65 acres was leased to Range Resources back in March of 06.

Oh, so you just ended up going to the same deal, same monster?

The same monster?

Why would I do that?

That's why you backed out of it.

That's why I backed out.

And you think the little man doesn't stand a chance?

You don't stand a chance.

No way shape or form.

They come in, the land people come in, they lie to you.

They don't tell the truth.

And that's what really aggravates me and irritates me.

And your life is you wants to do it in the environment that you once knew is done.

It's over.

So.

So your land in your home wasn't your own?

No.

It's there.

Is it any better now that they've got just the tanks here and the wells are pumping?

You don't have as many people.

But every day there's somebody in here.

There is.

There's still no peace and quiet.

Somebody could be in here at 2:00, 3:00 in the morning.

And you road.

Are they going to fix that?

Have no idea.

And you and your pond have no idea?

Not that I'm in litigation.

Those who support drilling, like Rich Fitzgerald and Bob Macy of Alleghen County Council, say the problems landowners are experiencing now will be worked out.

If those things are being done, then then the perpetrators of that should be prosecuted.

They should be penalized, they should pay fines.

They should the law should be followed when there's when there's pollution that occurs.

There were so many complaints that people were not given full disclosure before they sign.

There needs to be controls in what we're doing.

We need energy.

This world and this country has has an insatiable desire for energy.

We have a clean source right under our feet.

We need to do it right.

The industry itself, I believe, wants to be responsible or responsible.

When the wells are drilled, they're drilled and they're encased and very, very solid.

In fact, I have I've bee to many meetings with different, manufacturers.

And I at this point, I'm not aware of any spillage or any broken or ruined, water tables.

Now, I be fair about this, but not every politician is so certain.

Pittsburgh City Councilman Doug Shields recently proposed a law that would ban Marcellus shale drilling within Pittsburgh city limits.

Where is the state of Pennsylvania and its Department of Environmental Protection And where's the regulatory environment that's needed to make sure that we do not do harm t the people of this Commonwealth, nor its resources.

What's really clear, that is really clear to me that has happened here about environmental rules i if the public has not understood just how many rules are in place, it's very easy to say we need more regulations, we need to change regulations.

Our industry is very open to, to strengthening rules where they need to be strengthened to filling in gaps, to, to addressing new concerns as they arise.

But this, this concept of not being a regulated industry could not be further from the truth.

But Councilman Shields is still concerned about what those regulations might be, and he's worried about the environmental impact and cleanu cost of Marcellus Shale drilling and nobody that I know of, and that I've spoken with in the last five months, has been able to tell me with some authority about what that is.

It's a huge question mark.

And in my mind, I tell people, as you go to Fort Worth and you go to the Barnett Shales and go to Dish, Texas, and let's go smell and se what's going on right there now.

The noise impacts from the compression units.

Go talk to the people in Texas that live next to those.

Go talk to the guy that has an oil Derrick as big as that tower behind us that carries electrical lines literally ten feet off his backyard, where his kids play.

And it's working night and day.

Where did the property values of that guy's house go?

Who's going to buy that home?

This is it turns out you don't really have to go to Texas to get those answers.

This home video was shot by Chris Hallowich, which in Washington County, PA, about two miles away from the house.

Here, as the crow flies, my, two children and I decided to go for a ride because we heard a bunch of noise.

We could see a burning light.

We wanted to see what the flare looked like up close.

We weren't expecting it to be as big as this.

This is a lined but empty fracking pond.

And the house just in the background belongs to Chris and Stephanie.

They say the proximity of this pond and the adjacent industrial site have ruined their property.

I have a basically try to sell this place.

Nobody will purchase it.

One of the real estate agents told you about that.

It'd be very hard to market this house.

And even if we did find somebody that say, worked for, you know, the gas industry and would be willing to live amongst all this and drink the water, we can't contaminate, we can't.

They wouldn't be able to find a bank to finance them if we disclose we have contaminated water.

So you're stuck.

We're stuck.

I mean, we've lost everything.

I mean, what's here, it's it'll probably sit empty very soon because we don't have a choice.

I cannot leave my kids here with the issues we have with the odors and is starting to show health problems.

I refuse to keep them here, but complaints go beyond personal property too moving all that water and equipment has left its mark on rural roads.

You see the road.

It's not a very big road.

They're out here doing road work because they've completely torn up the road.

So they've been running all well at least all day.

And I'm sure more than just today out here dumping loads of gravel because the road just wasn't strong enough to handle the volume of truck traffic that's out here.

And you better get out of their way because they're not going to pull off the side for you.

Pumping stations, compression stations, huge parking lots for trucks loaded with fracking fluids, and the seemingly never ending temporary pipelines to carry the fluids have become the norm for this part of rural Washington County.

And those who live near it or with it say the cost has been huge.

This dog, Dottie, is the reason why I'm able to talk to you people today.

Because she quit drinking the water and thus I quit drinking in the water and had the water tested.

If it wasn't for her, none of us would have known the water was bad and we would have all drank it.

Carol Jean Moten lives in the village of rain, like others who live near the drilling.

She says the animals were the first to let them know something was wrong.

You know, I kept asking her to drink water, given her water, water.

And then finally she would she refused to drink the water and, she ended up being incontinent.

It wasn't long before there were health problems and the human members of the family.

Carol Jean's father, was in his 80s and recovering from a stroke.

I took care of him every day for three years, and he was fine in 2006.

Toward 2007.

Beginning in 2008, he got very, very ill.

Not like stroke related but they called them Unwitnessed episodes.

Carol Jean says that every time her father went to the hospital away from the well water, he got better.

And every time he came home and drank it again, he got worse.

It wasn't long befor the whole neighborhood was sick.

Everybody in this community has sweats.

They have upper respiratory infections that start as airborne viruses, and then they go into a bacterial infection and turn into pneumonia.

Despite this anecdotal evidence, Kathryn Klaber of the Marcellus Shale Coalition maintains that the protections on drilling are such that no one has ever proven that groundwater has been contaminated.

There is such a protective layer there that you do not have some, some rogue escaping of gas and water as you're doing this drilling.

That does not mean that there can't be, disturbance of that preexisting, contamination in the surrounding.

And we need to do everything we can to build the wells in a way that that limits that kind of, disturbance and, you know, are working the technical folks are working on that every day.

Positive.

For chloroform, iron, magnesium oil, chloride equals 30mg/l.

Methane gas is 1.8mg.

I want answers, I want for them to stop lying to me.

Do not whiz on my leg and tell me it is raining.

And then do not tell me it did not rain.

I feel betrayed, I feel my intelligence has been insulted.

I am not stupid.

I am a layman.

These people are exempt from the Clean Air and Clean Water Act.

That is just an amazing argument that I keep hearing that has no basis in reality.

The Safe Drinking Water Act never regulated hydraulic fracturing.

States have done that.

They don't even have to tell their employees what chemicals they are using.

I think it's very important that there's full disclosure of any chemicals that are going into the ground, that we understand what they are, we understand the dangers.

Again, I just think it's a it's a huge educational process that all of us are learning as, as this is fairly new to us in Texas and Louisiana.

They've been doing this fo decades in Western Pennsylvania.

The Marcellus has really just been discovered over the last few years.

So I think all of us are kind of coming up to speed and learning, learning what's what goes on with Marcellus drilling.

And that learning curve is going to have to be steep.

Marcellus shale drilling may be affecting people beyond Pennsylvania farmland.

The process is coming to Pittsburgh's doorstep.

So you'll walk this area quite often.

Walk your dogs here every day.

Yeah.

Lisa Lynn Kocsis Kumar and Mark Schneider are neighbors who live in Lincoln Place, a section of Pittsburgh so rural and setting that it does not feel like the city.

Yeah, kids come down here in the woods and play.

They ride their bikes down here and even see a house from here.

You know, you sure?

We're in the city?

We're in the city.

There's a house.

I see a rooftop over there.

Oh, when they come in here and they clear all these woods and they put these roads in, you'll see all the houses and all the houses all see the drill site.

And all the houses will be affected.

Plan A is we don't want it.

I don't want it.

I don't think it needs to be in an urban area.

Especially in the, in the city of Pittsburgh.

Herb, this is the most suburban urban utopia.

Yes.

Or just a little patch of heaven in the middle of nowhere.

And they want to take that away.

We want to have homes that are heated.

If we want to be able to drive, vehicles, to get to work, to get to family reunions, to have our kids go to school, we need to think hard about what is the right mix of energy.

Yes, but you have to eat too.

And you have to have water to live.

I could we don't even get free gas.

We don't get no free gas.

It don't benefit me.

Yeah, I'm only one benefit.

It was the gas company.

They're the ones that ruined my property, ruined our lives, and they're the only ones who benefited.

I think somebody I'll do something about this water system, that's all.

I wanted to get some good water we have got in front of us to either embrace or to miss an opportunity.

An energy future that has, natural gas right at the center of it.

And we can either do it right and we can be proud that we were par of this, opportunity in America.

Or we can turn our back on it for petty interests and, very kind of, in the weeds kind of approaches.

And it's going to pass us by.

It is part of our future.

And we should not be thinking about moratorium.

We should be thinking about ho we should use more of this field If we really care, make sure you're prepared.

Make sure you know what's coming your way.

Because we didn't have a clue.

No farms, no food.

That's what it comes down to.

How to heat our homes and how to move our vehicles.

And how to light our lights.

If we don't recognize that, that's really.

It's what's at stake.

We're going to be, we're going to be moving backwards really fast.

The government and the people out there don't help us to stop these people from doing what they're doing.

Then who knows what's going to happen.

It don't look good.