Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting with Disaster

In his most powerful investigation to date, award-winning journalist Walter M. Brasch digs into the natural gas industry and extracts the truth about fracking. Horizontal fracturing, better known as fracking, is the process of injection as much as seven million gallons of water, propants (like silica sand), and toxins into the earth to fracture the shale and extract methane. Dr. Brasch readily acknowledges that the engineering to create fracking may be one of the most significant works of science of the latter twentieth century. Politicians want natural gas companies to come into their states, because of the numbers of well-paying jobs the industry create, and the lower costs of natural gas to the consumer. Dr. Brasch investigates those claims, as well as an extensive look at the money trail between the industry and the politicians’ campaign receipts. Combining both scientific evidence and extensive interviews with those affected by fracking throughout the country, he concludes that errors made by the natural gas industry as well as the process itself have caused significant public health and the environmental problems that also affect agriculture, wildlife, and livestock.