Public Herald founders Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic are setting off on a summer tour to call attention to hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking.
The journalists co-directed the documentary Triple Divide which deals with fracking in Pennsylvania. They’re taking the film to communities throughout the country that are dealing with their own fracking issues. And they're using a vehicle that doesn't need gasoline.
According to Pribanic, “Triple Divide is an investigation. It’s answering the question, ‘How are state regulators, how is industry handling the negative impacts from fracking?’ And in that investigation we interview people who have never been interviewed before. We end up looking at cases on fracking that have never been publicized before. For instance, the idea of this pre-drill testing scandal where the state is allowing companies to dismiss their own science and water contamination cases. Essentially changing the background water quality history of an area.”
Based on their experiences making the Triple Divide, the Public Herald duo have also started working on an open source project for compiling complaint data on fracking through publicfiles.org.
