Feds Pave Way for Fracking Industry to Perpetrate Biggest Land Grab in U.S....
Officials from Central New York Oil & Gas recently informed landowner Bob Swartz that the company plans to cut "a 50-foot-wide, 400-foot-long gash through an ancient stand of trees" in his front...
View ArticleWhat Are They Hiding? “Gasland” Filmmaker Handcuffed, Escorted Out of Public...
Why would House Republicans bar an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker from last week's public hearing on hydraulic fracturing? Hmmmmmm. Could it be that they're hiding something? Nah, couldn't be –...
View ArticleDrought Dangers: Frackers in Colorado Will Have Plenty of Water But Farmers...
More upside down priorities from the western fracking front. In drought-struck Colorado, oil and gas companies will have plenty of water for their fracking operations this summer, but farmers may not...
View ArticleA Timid First Step: Obama’s Proposed Fracking Rules Don’t Go Nearly Far Enough
If there's anything we've learned in the last couple of years since the word "fracking" entered our lexicon, it's this: Natural gas drillers don't want you to know what they're up to. From the Oklahoma...
View ArticleMystery Illness and Mystery Smells: The Neighbors of America’s Fracking Boom...
Kay Allen is a nurse who deserves some answers. She works at a health clinic in Burgettstown, Pa. -- in the southwestern corner of the Keystone State where the rolling hills are now pockmarked with...
View Article“A New Right of Love”: A Pennsylvania Farmer’s Moving Anti-Fracking Eulogy To...
I've been reading a lot lately about everyday Americans getting fed up with fracking -- with the way that the big gas companies have been running roughshod over lush rolling hills and pristine farmland...
View Article“Fresh, frizzy…fracked”: What else must fracked Wyoming homeowners do to get...
Meet Louis Meeks -- a longtime landowner outside the picturesque rural community of Pavillion, Wyoming. The rolling hillsides here have hosted natural gas wells for decades, but the pace of activity...
View ArticleFracking for dollars: Articles about big paydays for mineral rights overlook...
Sometimes the most important part of a story is what it doesn't say. I was thinking that this week when I sat down to read another major story in the New York Times about hydraulic fracturing, or...
View ArticleNew York’s Gov. Cuomo needs to learn that you can’t frack your way out of the...
Your heart has to go out to the dairy farmers of upstate New York. They work long hours to bring staples of the American diet to your table every morning -- and yet it's just getting harder and harder...
View ArticleMineral royalties fraud: A new legal frontier
This week I saw a story out of New York State, where officials are in the process of debating whether to allow hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas in some areas whether thousands of...
View Article“The poison beneath us”: Big Oil’s toxic legacy grows to unthinkable proportions
I became an environmental lawyer because of the reckless way that Big Oil has been treating the American landscape for decades. My first big case was launched more than 20 years ago, after we learned...
View Article“The Sky Is Pink,” and how big oil and gas companies get to drill first,...
I read a lot of environmental headlines every day, but this one really caught my eye. It said, "After six decades of fracking, regulation considered." The story was out of California, but its essence...
View ArticleReason No. 317 to be alarmed about fracking: It’s hot outside!
It was Bob Dylan who famously said that you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. In the summer of 2012, you don't need a weatherman to know it's hot out there. Heck, just open your...
View ArticleBlinding us with pseudo-science: Tainted studies distort real fracking story
When it comes to science, the big money folks behind Big Oil and Gas -- and their ideological buddies on the Far Right -- have two very different strategies. When confronted with the many, many studies...
View Article“We’re drilling all over the place”: Why Americans have to protest fracking...
Remember when the election of Barack Obama was supposed to change everything on environmental policy? Some days that seems like it was a long time ago, doesn't it? To be sure, no administration could...
View ArticleThe people know the truth: Fracking just isn’t safe
This past week, the natural gas industry -- the people who've brought fracking to a community near you -- held a major convention in Philadelphia, not far from the Marcellus Shale region where some of...
View ArticleJindal leaves the polluted waters of Louisiana to test the political waters...
It's been a pretty stressful month down here in Louisiana. Folks in communities like Braithwaite over in Plaquemines Parish are still trying to dry out from Hurricane Isaac, which was the worst storm...
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