Much to the delight of anti-fracking activists like Mark Ruffalo, director Josh Fox‘s documentary Gasland was nominated for an Academy Award this morning.

The film explores fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, a technology developed by Halliburton. What exactly is fracking? Aside from the best sci-fi swear word ever coined (thank you Battlestar Gallactica)!

The Gasland website describes it as follows:

“Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a means of natural gas extraction employed in deep natural gas well drilling. Once a well is drilled, millions of gallons of water, sand and proprietary chemicals are injected, under high pressure, into a well. The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well.”

What’s the problem with that? Well, the water injected down there can mix with the ground water, essentially polluting it with heavy metals and carcinogens.

Ruffalo, a long time anti-fracking activist, has promoted the film, held a panel on the effects of fracking,  attended a protest and was even added to a terror watch list.

Gasland has already won the prestigious Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Prize for documentaries.

Watch the trailer for Gasland below…

Get Ecorazzi in your inbox, once a week:

About Ali Berman

Ali Berman is a writer, teacher and activist. She works as a humane educator for HEART teaching kids about issues affecting people, animals and the environment. Ali is also a fiction writer. Her published work can be found on her website at aliberman.com. In early 2012 Ali co-founded flipmeover, a production company with the mission to use media to raise awareness of social issues.

View all posts by Ali Berman →