Phelim McAleer continues to expose fraud in the movement against hydraulic fracturing:

If you’ve read my reports and newsletters on hydraulic fracturing, you’ve encountered Mayor Tillman, the filmmaker McAleer, and Alisa Rich.

My Facts on Fracking Policy Report discussed Dish, Texas, and Tillman:

In 2010 the mayor of Dish, Texas, Calvin Tillman, ignited controversy by announcing he and his family were moving from the town, which is located on the Barnett Shale formation and has 60 wells that are hydraulically fractured, because of his concerns over air quality and his family’s health. The air in Dish reportedly had elevated levels of many chemicals, including benzene, a known carcinogen. The mayor blamed his younger son’s nosebleeds on fracking and suggested it might have also affected his older son’s asthma.

Nevertheless, a Texas State Health Department study on Dish residents found that the toxin levels in the blood of the “majority of participants” were “similar to those measured in the general U.S. population suggesting that their exposures to these contaminants were not different than those received by people living in other areas of the U.S.”; that for others, the inconsistent pattern suggested the “exposures were most likely due to other factors,” including smoking or exposure to disinfectants or home maintenance products; and that “only residents with elevated levels of benzene in their blood were smokers.”

Meanwhile, energy companies made changes, and state air quality monitoring stations are finding the air pollution levels in Dish to be within compliance.

McAleer’s work has previously appeared in a newsletter, when he got an extraordinary admission on camera from anti-fracking filmmaker Josh Fox (“Gasland”) about his film’s signature — and knowingly misleading — scene of flammable tap water:

With respect to “Gasland,” the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission had investigated the property two years before the movie was released. They found “no indications of oil & gas related impacts to water well.”

Still, regulators returned after the movie and retested, again finding “biogenic gas that was not related to oil and gas activity” — and furthermore found evidence that the methane had long been present. That included “a 1976 publication by the Colorado Division of Water Resources states that the aquifer contains ‘troublesome amounts of … methane.'”

“Gasland” director Josh Fox publicly admitted on camera that he knew about those findings but chose to leave them out because he considered them “not relevant.” As he stated, “I don’t care about the report from 1976. There are reports from 1936 where people say they could light their water on fire in New York state. But that’s no bearing on their situation, at all.”

About Rich, a recent newsletter discussed her dealings with Steven “flaming garden hose” Lipsky in detail. I cite the email in which she encourages Lipsky to hook up the hose to the gas vent and take an air sample five feet away so she can contact her friend at the EPA to intervene. The EPA’s intervention here was unprecedented and eventually, ingloriously withdrawn. Several studies of the water in the area — including most recently one by the media’s trusted researchers — found no evidence that fracking caused gas to get in the water, and that instead it was from a shallow formation that was likely penetrated by water wells.

Rich, shown in McAleer’s video admitting in court under oath that she had fraudulently claimed to hold a Ph.D. and to be an engineer, had enjoyed a long relationship with the EPA administrator responsible for the unprecedented federal intervention, Al Armendariz.

Armendariz was forced to resign when video surfaced of him speaking to colleagues about methods of EPA enforcement. Armendariz talked about the importance of the deterrent effect that follows from the EPA “making examples of people” by going after them aggressively. As he put it,

The Romans used to conquer little villages in the Mediterranean. They’d go into a little Turkish town somewhere, they’d find the first five guys they saw and they would crucify them. And then you know that town was really easy to manage for the next few years.