Twelve months ago if someone came to you and started talking about 'fracking' you might wonder what they were on about. Now the controversial term is at the heart of a raging social and environmental debate. Fracking involves pumping millions of litres of water and toxic chemicals into the ground, to fracture rocks and tap natural gas. But from the suburbs of Sydney, to the mountains of the United States, that process is dividing communities like never before. Here's Nick Lazaredes.
REPORTER: Nick Lazaredes
West of the Hudson River, the Catskill Mountains are one of America's most significant watersheds a catchment that provides drinking water to more than 20 million people in New York, Philadelphiaand hundreds of other towns and cities in between. But this ecological wonder that gives New York its life-blood is under threat - as big industry seeks to exploit the energy mother-lode that lies deep beneath it.
It's called the Marcellus Shale, a sedentary rock formation that stretches from here in the Catskills - through Pennsylvania to west Virginia and as far west as Ohio and trapped deep within it - trillions of cubic metres of natural gas.
But it's the method gas companies use to release and capture the gas - called Hydraulic Fracking - that's alarming residents in the big apple.
PROTESTER: Are we going to let them poison our water?
CROWD: No
PROTESTER: Are we going to let the drillers come in and ruin our state?
CROWD: No
PROTESTER: Are we going to put a stop to this?
CROWD: Yes
PROTESTER: Are we going to ban fracking.
CROWD: Yes
'Fracking' means drilling deep into the shale rocks. Millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals are then pumped at extreme pressures into the rock, which fractures and opens, allowing the gas to escape. Although there's currently a moratorium on fracking in the state, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is planning to lift the ban and regulate its use.
PROTESTER: Governor Cuomo, save our water. Don't frack New York.
The protesters are worried that if fracking is allowed, New York will go the way of neighbouringPennsylvania, where contamination and environmental degradation has been linked to fracking.
PROTESTER: People got sick, their water supplies got damaged, and it's horrible, and what's worse is that the DEP in Pennsylvania is not even standing up for the people, they're actually siding with the industry and it's frightening and unfortunately because of all of the exemptions in our national laws there's really no one looking after the people.
Pennsylvania is at the epicenter of America's high stakes extreme energy boom. It's also the focus of mounting reports of environmental contamination and sick residents caused, they say, by water contaminated with the gas and the chemicals used to extract it. In the sleepy town of Damascus, straddling the Delaware River, concerned locals have taken a leading role in the fracking debate - collecting evidence about contamination and threats to human health.
BARBARA ARINDELL, ACTIVIST: Now we've gotten reports from people in Washington, Greene & FayetteCounty, which is down in this lower corner of Pennsylvania, about herds of cattle which have been affected by gas drilling waste and the cattle end up being sold into the food supply. This is your hamburger complete with gas drilling wastes and this is part of what we call the food-shed - The effect on the food-shed.
They're known as the Damascus Citizens – and the group owes much of its success to community activist Barbara Arindell.
BARBARA ARINDELL: These farmers can see that the cattle are not well - and so they sell them - because it's the farmers that are going to take the hit if the cattle are not sold - Gas drillers will not pay the farmers.
At the height of the Bush administration, new energy laws were introduced exempting gas companies involved in fracking from revealing either their techniques or the make-up of the potent chemical brews they pumped deep below the Earth's surface.
BARBARA ARINDELL: In 2005, there was passage of the 2005 Energy Policy Act which was shepherded through the Congressional process by Dick Cheney, who was then the Vice President, but before that had been the head of Haliburton, which was a big Hydro Fracturing company.
TELEPHONIST AT HALIBURTON: Haliburton Corporate affairs.
JOSH FOX, DIRECTOR ‘GASLAND’: Did I just talk to you?
TELEPHONIST AT HALIBURTON: It's Haliburton - how can I help you?
JOSH FOX: I'd like to find someone at Haliburton, so if you'd please ring me back.
Josh Fox also lives in Damascus. His probing documentary 'Gasland' was nominated for an Academy Award.
JOSH FOX: One day I got a letter in the mail. It was from a natural gas company. The letter told me that my land was on top of something called the Marcellus Shale.
After being approached by a gas company wanting to drill on his property, Josh attended a meeting of the Damascus Citizens hosted by Barbara Arindell.
JOSH FOX: And I didn't sleep for, you know, the next week. And then I started to look at the things Barbara was reporting and I thought, how am I going to make anything - is this true? Where do these statistics come from? Where do these….. who are these people? What's happening? And I met some friends, Joe and Jane, and they said, "You gotta go to Dimock, just go to Dimock, it's only 60 miles away." And the rest is history, right?"
CRAIG SAUTNER, DIMOCK RESIDENT: The closest they were drilling to me was Dimock, Pennsylvania.
Dimock, Pennsylvania is home to one of the most productive gas wells on the Marcellus Shale and a confronting example of what can go wrong.
CRAIG SAUTNER: Well, this is the well right here. As you can see, we've got the pipe on here is to vent the gas out of it so we don't have it come into the house – it’s not a pretty sight is it?
For three years, Craig Sautner has been living a nightmare. His water has been contaminated and he and his family are largely being ostracised by their community after taking a stand against fracking.