Aug 27, 2010 By Steve Barrett for The 4 min read

WAYNESBURG – Greene County is one of 20 communities chosen to host an afternoon designed to raise awareness and take action against unregulated gas drilling. The screening of director Josh Fox’s award-winning and controversial documentary “Gasland” will take place at Waynesburg Central High School’s auditorium at 1 p.m. Saturday.

Fox is expected to be attendance at the Waynesburg screening, which will be one stop of his exclusive 20-stop tour across the United States. The tour is being held prior to the September theatrical premiere of the film, which was selected as the winner of this year’s Sundance Special Jury Prize.

According to information found on the film’s website, the purpose of the tour is to raise awareness about the negative impact of natural gas drilling on public health and the environment.

Southwestern Pennsylvania, including Fayette and Greene counties, has seen an increase in natural gas drilling in recent years, largely because of the mostly untapped, gas-rich Marcellus shale geologic formation.

Interest in developing Marcellus shale has increased because recent improvements in natural gas extraction technology and higher energy prices now make recovering the gas more profitable, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

Actress Susan Barnes of Greene County, an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences member, helped arrange the screening in Waynesburg after she saw the film on HBO this summer.

“I was curious to watch it after learning that the film was a winner at Sundance, and 10 minutes into the film, I was holding my breath,” she said. “It is truly a compelling movie, and after seeing it I was so afraid that I didn’t know what to do. I just knew that people here had to see this film.”

Barnes found Fox’s contact information and called him to invite him to screen the film in Greene County. After overcoming a few scheduling conflicts, the parties involved were able to secure the Saturday screening as part of Fox’s cross-country tour. Barnes said she encourages everyone to attend the screening on Saturday.

“Information and education is the key to everything, because if you don’t have information and become educated about the truth then you really can’t make rational decisions,” she said. “It is really important for the information found in this film to be made available to the public. And once they are exposed to the information they will then have the free will to make their own decisions about gas well drilling.”

According to the film’s website, “Gasland” tells the story of the effects of the largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history that is sweeping across the United States; the Halliburton-developed drilling technology of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” has unlocked what the website refers to as a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath many residents’ properties.

The film questions whether or not fracking – which is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling – is safe, the website states. The film follows Fox as he is asked by a natural gas company to lease his Milanville land for drilling, leading him to embark on a cross-country trek to speak with residents abut issues regarding gas drilling; this journey leads Fox to “uncover a trail of secrets, lies and contamination,” according to the website.

Among the highlights of the film, which is narrated by Fox, is a segment in which the director visits a Pennsylvania town where drilling occurred, and the town’s residents are able to light their drinking water on fire.

“Gasland” has won several film festival awards and has received a large amount of critical praise. Robert Koehler of Variety, for example, referred to the film as “one of the most effective and expressive environmental films of recent years.”

However, the film has also received opposition from various oil and gas industry groups such as Energy In Depth, a group based in Washington, D.C., which has created a web page with a list of claimed factual inaccuracies in the documentary.

The documentary will continue to be shown on HBO through 2010. The Saturday screening of “Gasland” is free and open to the public. For more information about the film and tour, visit online at www.gaslandthemovie.com.