TV News LIES

The 20 people who work full-time for Fresno County farmer Joe Del Bosque are on winter break now. But he is not sure they will have a job to come back to, let alone the 300 temporary workers he usually hires to harvest melons.

“I’m worried about my workers,” said Del Bosque, who farms 2,000 acres in a region known as the nation’s food basket for producing almost half of the fruits, vegetables and nuts on America’s tables.

“Right now we’re not sure if we’re going to bring them back or how many … Crops are all in jeopardy right now,'' he said, adding "This is the driest year in 100 years.”

Tap water in Charleston, West Virginia, and nearby communities will remain unsafe in the coming days, an official said on Saturday as residents spent a third day unable to bathe, shower or drink from the faucet due to a chemical spill tainting the Elk River.

As much as 5,000 gallons (18,927 liters) of industrial chemical 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, or Crude MCHM, leaked into the river on Thursday, state officials said.

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared that a group of Texas homes near a gas-drilling operation didn’t have dangerous levels of methane in their water, it relied on tests conducted by the driller itself.

Now, independent tests from Duke University researchers have found combustible levels of methane in some of the wells, and homeowners want the EPA to re-open the case.

The previously undisclosed Duke testing illustrate the complaints of critics who say the agency is reluctant to sanction a booming industry that has pushed down energy prices for consumers, created thousands of jobs and buoyed the economy.

By now you’ve likely heard that the U.S. is expected to overtake Russia this year as the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas. The surge in production comes from a drilling boom enabled by using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, along with, in many places, horizontal drilling. These technologies have made previously inaccessible pockets of oil and gas in shale formations profitable.

But at what cost? Accidents, fatalities and health concerns are mounting. Here’s a look at what we’ve learned about the dangers of fracking in the last few weeks.

Born of the energy crisis of the 1970s, gas driller Lenape Resources flourished in western New York for more than three decades — until the revolutionary technology that sparked the nation’s shale gas boom brought the industry to a screeching halt in New York under a moratorium now in its sixth year.

Today, Lenape has just five employees, down from 100 in years past. "Those five, we’re trying to give them work in Pennsylvania," said John Holko, the company’s president. "We’re not going to be here much longer."

As another year closes with a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in New York and no timetable for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to decide whether to lift it, drilling interests have all but given up on the state, and environmental groups are pressing for a permanent ban.

Nearly three years after a major earthquake, tsunami and nuclear radiation leak devastated coastal and inland areas of Japan's Fukushima prefecture, 175 miles north-east of Tokyo, Namie has become a silent town of ghosts and absent lives.

Namie's 21,000 residents remain evacuated because of continuing high radiation levels, the product of the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, six miles to the south. Homes, shops and streets are deserted except for the occasional police patrol or checkpoint.