Frackman: Anti-Fracking Activism in Queensland

Frackman: Anti-Fracking Activism in Queensland

Directed by Richard Todd (2015)

Film Review

This documentary concerns “accidental” anti-fracking activist Dayne Pratsky, a Queensland farmer who refused to allow Halliburton to frack for coal seam gas on his farm. When his neighbors’ kids started getting sick with headaches, rashes, and nosebleeds, he organized a grassroots campaign to pressure the government to either ban or properly regulate fracking.

What impressed me most about the film is its similarity to our experience here in Taranaki. Fracking began here about 25 years ago, though the number of wells increased exponentially when skyrocketing oil prices and new horizontal drilling technology increased its financial viability.

As in Australia, foreign oil and gas companies moved into Taranaki with no notification or consultation of local residents. Likewise, in both countries farmers agreed to one or two wells and were suddenly surrounded with 10 or more. Taranaki residents living adjacent to wells are experiencing the same nosebleeds, headaches, rashes (and cancer), as well as the smoke and benzene smell of 24/7 flaring, the deafening noise of drilling and heavy truck traffic, water contamination with toxic chemicals, and atmospheric venting of methane gas and carcinogenic benzene.

The film depicts Pratsky eventually joining forces with Drew Hutton, founder of Australia’s Lock the Gate campaign. Hutton helped us start our own Lock the Gate campaign in Taranki nine years ago. He helped Pratsky organize an inspired protest action in which scores of farmers blocked Halliburton’s access to their fracking rigs with pickup trucks.

Faced with the reality that he couldn’t expose a wife and family to the health risks of living in an industrial fracking zone, Dratsky eventually allowed Halliburton to buy him out and left his his farm.

He remains as active as ever in the anti-fracking movement and supports his former neighbors seeking similar buyouts. As in Taranaki, Queensland farms covered with fracking rigs are virtually impossible to sell on the open market.

Link to Dratsky’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/The-Frackman-Dayne-Pratzky-141386222547945/

Anyone with a public library card can view the film free on Kanopy: https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/frackman

To sign up type “Kanopy” and the name of your local library into your search engine.

US Military Burnpits: The New Agent Orange?

In their August 1 episode of The Stream, Al Jazeera English explores the plight of US veterans and Iraqi and American civilians exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq, Afghanistan and the US. Although Obama outlawed the use of war zone burn pits, they continue to operate on 200 military bases across the US.*

Historically burn pits have been used to dispose of munitions, metals, plastics, chemicals and corpses, releasing a host of toxic chemicals to the atmosphere.

The US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) listed 110,989 veterans and service members in its latest burn pits registry. However, as with Agent Orange exposure, the VA has been slow to investigate burn pit related illnesses and routinely denies medical benefits to veterans who become chronically ill from burn pit exposure. They most commonly suffer from acute and debilitating respiratory illnesses and throat, lung and brain cancers and leukemia.

In addition to highlighting a recent study of the birth defects and medical problems of Iraqi women and children exposed to burn pit fumes, the program questions why the Pentagon continues to operate nearly 200 open burn pits around the United States. According to a recent ProPublica investigation, these sites are getting rid of extremely toxic materials with little or no oversight and regulation, and often violate existing environment regulations.

At the Colfax plant in Louisiana, millions of pounds of munitions are burned  just a few hundred yards from a small, mostly black community. High levels of toxic vapors like acrolein and benzene have been found in the air, which according to the World Health Organization have “no safe level of exposure.”

The program host interviews the widow of a US vet killed by burn pit exposure, as well as Iraqi and American scientists.

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*Although President Obama outlawed the use of war-zone burned pits by executive order, a 2016 article in Stars and Stripes  suggests US military bases continue to use them in Iraq.

 

Bottled Water: Neither Pure Nor Safe

Tapped

by Stephanie Soechtig and Jason Lindsey (2009)

Film Review

Tapped is about the negative health and environmental effects of bottled water, and the obscene greed and dishonesty of multinational bottling companies like Nestle, Coke and Pepsi. With the recent decline in soft drink sales (owing to health concerns), the world’s biggest soft drink companies have latched onto the bottled water scam. According to the filmmakers, 40% of bottled water is actually bottled tap water. Acquafina (bottled tap water) is the major Pepsi brand. Dasani is made by Coke.

The Citizens Movement Against Water Mining

The film opens with a snapshot of citizen campaigns in Maine, Colorado and Michigan trying to stop the Swiss food giant Nestle from emptying their fresh water aquifers – free of charge – and selling it back to them for 1900 times the cost of tap water.

It goes on to feature Raleigh and Atlanta residents who were ordered to restrict water usage during a recent drought – while bottled water companies continued to remove hundreds of thousands of gallons from their shrinking aquifers.

Health and Environmental Hazards of PET Plastic

In addition to the depletion of aquifers, rivers and streams by the $800 billion bottled water industry, the manufacture and disposal of plastic bottled water containers is even more hazardous to human health and the environment.

In the US, all the paraxylene used in water bottles is manufactured (from petroleum) at in Corpus Cristi Texas. An extremely dirty industry, the Flint Hills factory releases benzene and other toxic contaminants to the surrounding air, water and soil. Accordingly, Corpus Christi has a far higher rate of cancer and birth defects than anywhere else in Texas.

Neither “Pure” Nor Safe

Contrary to all the advertising hype, unlike tap water, no federal or state agency is responsible for monitoring the purity or safety of bottled water. Independent testing of major brands has revealed contamination with bacterial pathogens, arsenic and cancer causing chemicals such as vinyl chloride, benzene, butadiene, styrene and toluene.

This is in addition to the phlalates and bisphenyl A that leach into the water from the plastic. The National Institutes of Health has linked bisphenyl A, one of the most toxic chemicals known to man, to childhood diabetes; obesity; breast and prostate cancer; liver, ovarian and uterine disease; and reduced sperm counts.

The Disposal Nightmare

Along with plastic bags, a large proportion of discarded water bottles (which never totally degrade) end up in the ocean, where they have resulted in enormous dead zones in the central and south Pacific, the North and South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean.

In view of all these concerns (and the refusal of Nestle, Pepsi and Coke to address them), some cities and universities have taken the bold step of banning bottled water sales. Six states have introduced a container deposit charge on plastic bottles to ensure they are recycled.