TV News LIES

Its contents remain mostly a mystery. But fracking wastewater has revealed one of its secrets: It can be highly radioactive. And yet no agency really regulates its handling, transport or disposal. First of a four-part series on radiation in fracking wastewater.

Randy Moyer hasn’t been able to work in 14 months. He’s seen more than 40 doctors, has 10 prescriptions to his name and no less than eight inhalers stationed around his apartment.

Forecasters are predicting explosive intensification this weekend for an extra-tropical storm in the North Atlantic that is expected to eclipse the intensity of last October's superstorm Sandy.

Unlike Sandy, the nameless North Atlantic superstorm poses no threat to land. But it does highlight the power such storms can attain.

It's forecast to develop winds of up to 98 miles an hour, while the air pressure at its center – expected to reach a low between 920 to 930 millibars – would rival that of a category 4 hurricane, according to forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Ocean Prediction Center in College Park, Md.

Dave Cogar counts down the days until he's fracked.
Through a haze of cigarette smoke at the Brass Rail bar here, he laments about living on welfare. He still finds jobs where he can -- working construction or fixing computers around this small town south of Pittsburgh -- but he says he's fallen short of creating the life he wants for himself and his teenage son.

So he's come to the conclusion that natural gas hidden in the Marcellus Shale, thousands of feet beneath his rural Pennsylvania land, may offer him a second chance.

A letter from Yoko Ono, written while visiting Pennsylvania communities impacted by fracking:

After being invited to visit Pennsylvania by residents who have experienced the impacts of fracking, my son Sean and I decided to go see the harms of fracking up close. Our friend Susan Sarandon came with us, and we had the incredible honor of being joined by Mahatma Ghandi's grandson, Arun Ghandi, as well. We also invited members of the media.

Driving into the quaint town of Montrose, PA, I could hardly have anticipated how upsetting the next stops on our tour would be: a gas pad of four drills and a hissing pressure release, a giant compressor station under construction, large trucks full of sand and toxic chemicals rumbling down narrow dirt roads, and a drilling rig reaching to the sky.

To see such a beautiful landscape ruined was disturbing enough, but not nearly as bad as the heart-break of meeting those whose health, homes and lives have been forever changed because of fracking: Vera Scroggins, Craig Stevens, Rebecca Roter, Frank Finan, Ray Kemble and the Manning family. They welcomed us into their homes with complete hospitality, and Tammy Manning even baked us delicious muffins.

And they told us their stories. How they can no longer drink the water from their own wells because they have been poisoned by fracking pollution. These American families are suffering from suddenly not having clean water for the essentials of healthy living. They are not able to use their well water to drink, cook with, wash dishes, bathe or do laundry. They are buying water every day. Can you believe it?

If current trends continue, the landscapes of states like New Mexico and Arizona may soon be unrecognizable.

The fire that burned through Forest Canyon, a breathtaking stretch of wilderness ringed by snowy peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, started in October and burned long past the end of the fire season. Trees still smoldered in late December, and the smoke mixed with dry snow blowing in the air.

Known as the Fern Lake Fire, the blaze tore through 3,500 acres of land the federal government set aside a century ago both to provide public enjoyment and protect it from human destruction.

Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a “progress report” on its ongoing study of hydraulic fracturing and the impacts of fracking on drinking water. The progress report contains a lot of interesting information, but one particular map caught my eye.

The map shows that fracking has occurred in more states than previously known, including places like Arizona, Nevada and Maryland. All in all, we now know that fracking has occurred in at least 32 states since 2005.