Fracking For Gas: Clean Energy Solution or the Next Drilling Disaster

Join us for a free viewing of "Gasland", a pathbreaking documentary on the controversial method of extracting natural gas from shale that is spreading across the country. Pockmarking the landscape in 38 states, fracking is now nearly everywhere. Some tout is as a job-creator and a way to achieve energy independence. Others blame it for contaminating aquifers and causing illnesses, including cancer. It is now a major issue in New York, where the NY City Council just passed a resolution urging a ban on fracking in the region -- which supplies water to 15 million people. Permits in the sensitive Delaware River watershed are expected beginning in early 2011 -- unless a state moratorium is signed into law.

Josh Fox takes us to some of the areas where this controversial procedure is being used. The documentary looks at the environmental, legal, and social costs of fracking, and how the procedure was exempted from federal environmental laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, in 2005.

Introduction by Joanne Spalding, attorney with the Sierra Club and an energy expert.

Room 110