Promise Land, The Move
Dead cows in Pennsylvania? Sorting out fact from fiction in the new feature movie “Promised Land” starring Matt Damon, which examines the underworld of the booming industry of hydraulic fracturing.
by Scott Tong
Marketplace for Thursday, January 3, 2013
Video of Promised Land – Official Trailer
AUDIO REVIEW: Scott Tong reviews ‘Promised Land’ on Marketplace
A new Hollywood film opens nationwide tomorrow…and this one’s not about Hobbits or French Revolutionaries. It’s about fracking. You heard that right. Matt Damon and John Krasinski star in a film called “Promised Land” about a natural gas drilling company coming to a town in rural Pennsylvania.
I caught an early screening of the film and decided to fact-check the plot and events from the movie to see what they got right and what they got “Hollywood right.”
Q: Fracking and dead cows, really? This is a central premise of the film — that shale gas drilling well, kills cows. Photos, posters in the film – even the big twist at the end – all suggest as much in Nebraska and Louisiana.
A: Yes, it is ture. Cows have died according to a Cornell study tallying reports of human and animal ailments near drill sites. Direct exposure to hydraulic fracturing fluid occurred in two cases: in one, a worker shut down a chemical blender during the fracturing process, allowing the release of fracturing fluids into an adjacent cow pasture, killing 17 cows in one hour; the other was a result of a defective valve on a fracturing fluid tank, which caused hundreds of barrels of hydraulic fracturing fluid to leak into a pasture where goats were exposed and suffered from reproductive problems over the following two years. …(more).
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