APRIL 2012 - ISSUE 03 - Massive Magazine

FEATURE
The debate over hydraulic fracturing has moved on since MASSIVE’s ground-breaking investigation
in March. Editor Matt Shand retraces the issues and reminds us not to lose perspective.
IT’S NOT THE GAS – IT’S THE PEOPLE
Amid the media hype, the protests,
and the community meetings it’s
easy to forget that the real story
of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking,
is not about shale gas. It’s about people.
And families. It’s about health and safety.
It’s just a drilling technique and people
want to know that it’s safe. People like David
Roberts – who have given up their lives
and part of their sanity to fight for what they
believe in. I watched David Roberts prepare
for the community meeting held at Stratford
in March to call for a moratorium on
the practice from the local council.
In my notebook I recorded his actions:
“David Roberts sits still amongst the chaos
ensuing around him. At the Stratford War
Memorial Hall people are filing in, taking
seats, swapping stories, and signing forms.
Underneath this the organiser’s nerves are
starting to run high. David’s included. He
looks casual enough in blue jeans, work
boots, and a red shirt, untucked, with sleeves
rolled up to the elbows, almost like he was
at the bar with the boys after a hard day’s
work. But, with from the right perspective,
you can see the subtle tide of nerves washing
in. He keeps rubbing his forehead, or
playing with his sleeves idly. Occasionally
he would lock his fingers together and bow
his head, taking in a moment away from
fracking, and contaminated water and mining
companies and documents and his fear
for the community he lives in. There has
been plenty of that over the last few days,
and there will be plenty more after this
meeting is done …”
People like Michael Self – who acted as
courier for our tour through the Taranaki
pastures. Throwing us around country road
bends in a green, automatic four-wheeldrive.
When he collected us he apologised
immediately for the state the vehicle was in,
saying he had “picked it up cheap after being
caught out in a flood”. The muffler was
broken, making the vehicle roar righteously
whenever the accelerator was pushed too
far to the floor, which happened often on
back-country roads.
He looked like Santa clause would if he
owned a farm or a plantation instead of a
reindeer ranch. His white beard formed a
dishevelled mane around his chin and this
was matched by his wildly hair, his hands
with dirt stains around the edges of the fingers,
and he wore jandals despite the cattle
fields he would be guiding us through later.
He was born and raised in the region (except
for study trips further afield), and there
was not a monument, shed, or hillside that
he could not match to an insightful piece
of trivia. “You see those silos up there,” he
yells, pointing to the horizon, “they paint
them like the cheese and over there is the
hill they do the cheese rolling competition.
Boy, those people run down those hills flatout.
One guy went crashing down and broke
three ribs. Three! But he kept on going. The
crowd loved it.”
Then he spots a stretch of houses and the
conversation turns back to its morbid, chilling
cancer, and deformity toll. And he tells
us about other people involved, people we
never met, or can name, but real people,
who live real lives on the emerald green
fields under the watchful eye of Mt Taranaki
and probably never cared about the words
hydraulic fracturing before, but who have
heard about nothing but since the story ran
in MASSIVE last month. It also ran on 60
Minutes and Campbell Live and Stuff and
in the local papers and featured in parliamentary
debates and question times. And
now, the most recent development – the
news that fracking will come under official
independent scrutiny, with the Parliamentary
Commissioner for the Environment,
Jan Wright, launching an investigation, to
be released before the end of the year.
But what will this investigation mean for
these people, and others like them? But
not just them but also so the oil company
and mining executives with employees to
pay, employees with children to feed and
families to support. What happens if Jan
Wright’s investigation determines fracking
is unsafe. What happens then?
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