Victor Furman
Upstate New York Landowner Shale Gas Activist at NYRAD-R

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Vic Furman looks at the more or less non-existent media coverage of the Dimock case and asks where the reporters are and why they’re missing. 

You wouldn’t know it, but for the last two weeks there has been an extremely important trial going on in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Two families from Dimock, Pennsylvania are suing Cabot Oil & Gas with in hopes of a big payoff from pretending what is a natural condition is somehow will look like gas drilling negligence to others. Is it just the money, though? Or, are there are factors and motives at work here? And, where is the media coverage.

Maybe it was the allure of Hollywood elitists like Mark Ruffalo, Yoko Ono and son Sean, Susan Sarandon or make-believe gas well expert Anthony (hide in my coat) Ingraffea. Maybe it was the influence of the Sierra Club, the Energy Justice Network or one of dozens of other fractivist groups funded by the Park Foundation and the Rockefellers. Who knows what drives these people, beyond the obvious desire of some to simply cash in?

Whatever the case, this one is not going well for them and what’s really troubling is the fact we’re not hearing much of anything about in the news from the usual purveyors of fractivist BS. They’ve suddenly gone dark, as if they were in on the game all along.  I am usually not one to beat too hard on the media, but I have to ask what the heck is going here? Where are the Times-Union, WICZ Fox 40,  WBNG News 12, TWC NEWS, Bloomberg, et al? 

Where are all those reporters who took multiple  pictures of that brown untested jug of water carried across New York by Craig Sautner and now by Craig Stevens? Where are the Democratic Assembly Members who held hearings in Albany based on the fear mongering claims Walter Hang (the extremely well paid representative of Parks and Rockefellers who leads so much of the effort on this side of the border? Where are they now that the truth is coming out?  Why, in the name of justice, are these clowns not reporting the good news that fracking has not polluted the water? Yes…where are the clowns?

If they had been reading these pages they would have found plenty to report. There is also at least one journalist showing up at court and reporting and it happens to be the great Phelim McAleer of FrackNation. I have taken the liberty of very briefly condensing his reports and providing links to them below:

The Dimock Trial:

“No Scientific Proof”

In a shocking admission that undermines much of the anti-fracking narrative pushed by environmentalists, a lawyer for plaintiffs suing an oil and gas company in Dimock, Pennsylvania has admitted the water in the area “is not contaminated” with fracking fluid. The admission came in the opening argument by lawyer Leslie Lewis for two families who claim their water was contaminated by fracking.

“This is not a case — this is not a case about toxic materials ending up in the water,” she told the jury.

“We do not have proof of that. We don’t have proof of that. This is not about fracking fluid appearing in the water. Hydraulic fracturing materials, we don’t have proof of that,” Ms Lewis added.

Dimock Plaintiff Exposed

Scott Ely is claiming that Cabot Oil and Gas has made his beautiful, pure, pristine Pennsylvania water undrinkable. He said they polluted it with methane and made it dirty, brown, smelly, and completely unusable when they started drilling in 2008. Except under cross examination Mr Ely had to admit that prior to getting his new well drilled he got his water from a spring at the house that was so dirty none of his family would drink it. In fact he was forced to admit that it was so dirty that his wife would only use bottled water for cooking. It was so bad he used bottled water up until 2003.

But then Scott Ely got a water well drilled in 2003. The idea that this well supplied pristine water until it was polluted by the evil oil and gas company very quickly withered away under a few pointed questions. It turns out that Ely’s water well is 300 ft deep but is only lined for 40ft. After that it is open to the earth, allowing clay and animals and anything else that comes out of the ground to fall into the water. It seems he has no case and no casing on his well.

Scott Ely [also] told three different people that they started to notice the water smelling and tasting bad in August 2008–and these were not just casual conversations. Ely confirmed this start date in a hand written declaration to his lawyer, and he repeated the claim to a hydro-geologist investigating the water. He even told a doctor that the problems with his water started in July 2008. The problem for his case is that Cabot did not start drilling the gas well he says polluted his water until late Sept/early October 2008. So unless there was a Dimock time warp, Scott Ely’s water problems started before the fracking for gas.

Seven Important Points

The Ely and Hubert families of Dimock, Pennsylvania are suing Cabot Oil & Gas for allegedly polluting their water. Countless celebrities have also pushed the lie that Dimock’s water was contaminated with fracking fluid. But the case has thrown serious doubts on the narrative being spun by activists.

Judge Carlson criticized the plaintiffs’ lawyer for attempts to introduce an enormous amount of “evidence” at the last minute, describing it as “extraordinary, unprecedented, unexplained and profoundly troubling development.”

The Ely and Hubert family have generally cast themselves as honest people who have been the victims of corporate malfeasance, but the trial has not been running two days and already the judge has made different observations about their honesty and character. The judge said their “profoundly and wholly unworkable approach” was doing “a grave disservice to their own counsel.” He said the Ely and Hubert families created a debacle “in part by concealing information from the court, opposing counsel and their own attorneys.”

But enough of their behavior. What about the case? The evidence? Well, there again the judge said some of the evidence being produced by the plaintiffs is extremely dodgy. He described parts of it as “completely unexplained, and wildly kaleidoscopic…voluminous, contradictory, cryptic, confused, and confusing.”

The plaintiffs like to have their cake and eat it, too. It emerged that one of the plaintiffs is a former Cabot employee and was receiving an oil and gas royalty check as they were suing the company. Scott Ely worked for a subsidiary of Cabot Oil & Gas as a bulldozer driver at the time he made his complaint and was receiving a royalty check also.

Scott Ely has been married three times, had numerous jobs and businesses, but it seems he is no stranger to corporate difficulties. Following a “management issue,” he closed a dental business he was running, owing the IRS $90,000. The debt exists from 2003. He told the court that he has not “walked away from it,” but as yet he has not paid the bill.

Scott Ely: Superman

It seems that Mr. Ely was no ordinary human back in 2008. He told the court that he could see it was a methane leak “through the sunlight”–even though methane is invisible. He also told the court that it “stunk like crazy”–even though he was forced to admit that methane/natural gas is odorless.

Those are quite the powers Scott Ely has acquired in the middle of a multi-million dollar law suit. He can suddenly find convenient memories. He can see gas that is invisible to the rest of the human race. He can smell gas that is odorless to the rest of the human race.

Guilty Children

You know how some children just can’t help blurting out the truth when they’ve done something wrong? They think everyone knows what they have done, and the tension becomes just too much. Did we have a guilty child moment yesterday in the Dimock Water trial? The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Leslie Lewis, was gently questioning lead plaintiff Monica Ely, who is claiming that fracking by Cabot Oil and Gas somehow polluted their water in 2008–or 2009 depending on which version of their complaint you care to believe. However, there is a 7,000 sq ft elephant in the room. Despite claiming their water was unusable–not for drinking, not for cooking, and not even for bathing–the Ely’s went ahead and built a $1 million, 7,000 sq ft, 22-bedroom mansion on a lot that they claimed had polluted water.

Strange behavior, indeed. Why would the Ely family do this?

Well, perhaps Ms. Lewis let the cat out of the bag yesterday when in attempting to portray her clients as innocent victims she dropped this clanger.

“Where I’m headed with this, your Honor, I’m attempting to elicit from this witness that they had no idea in this case what damages they may or not be [entitled to]…and they didn’t build their home to boost damages.” Of course they didn’t–who would suggest such a thing?

Dimock Plaintiffs Fail to Turn Back Time

The Ely and Hubert families have hit problems with their allegations that Cabot Oil and Gas polluted their water by drilling for natural gas in July/August 2008. Unfortunately for their multi-million dollar lawsuit, they admitted and agreed in other sworn statements that drilling in nearby wells didn’t start until late September/early October 2008.

This fact is a major problem for the plaintiffs, so their lawyer, Leslie Lewis, has spent a lot of time trying to rewrite history and wriggle out of this stipulation–trying to change agreed upon facts several days into a trial.

These requests so far have been in private, but this morning Judge Carlson let Ms. Lewis know, very publicly, he was having none of it. He said he understood the problems this created for the Ely and Hubert families (and their hopes of a big payday).

“I understand the evidence has revealed some inconsistency between the plaintiffs’ timeline concerning impacts on their water and the dates stipulated to when drilling commenced.”

But he said the inconsistency had been “patently obvious in the record of the case for some period of time.”

Blow To Anti-fracking Movement

The lawyer representing two families suing an oil and gas company has again admitted that the water was not affected or polluted by fracking fluids.

Leslie Lewis was forced to admit the water was not toxic as part of an appeal to the judge to stop opposing lawyers reading the full text of a letter from the EPA saying it was safe to drink.

“Objection your honor with respect to reading every detail of this letter….we conceded that there is no toxic content of the water that has been tested out,” she said to Judge Martin Carlson.

The Ely and Hubert families in Dimock, Pennsylvania have been part of an international movement against fracking and had claimed their water was polluted with chemicals. However, in the court case they admitted the water is not toxic but claim it has increased methane and was made “undrinkable.”

Reasons the Dimock Water Case Is Looking Very, Very Shaky

The plaintiffs’ case was collapsing long before they entered the court in Scranton. Their original complaint contained alarming allegations that Cabot and fracking caused neurological, gastrointestinal, and dermatological damage to the plaintiffs and their children. They also claimed that a blood study showed results consistent with toxic exposure to..heavy metals. But in the run up to the hearing, they failed to produce ANY evidence to back up these claims. No doctor’s report, no blood test, nothing. The evidence was so lacking that the judge prevented them from even raising the possibility in the court that their health was affected.

The plaintiffs’ lawyer is truly awful. Leslie Lewis is so bad that it’s possible that she’s looking for a sympathy verdict from the jury. She is disorganized, doesn’t seem to understand the science, and constantly tries to put words in witnesses’ mouths when she doesn’t get the answer she wants. She also has the habit of blurting out statements that damage her clients’ case. 

And her clients aren’t much better. It’s difficult to know if the Ely family are bad parents or bad liars or both. Despite claiming that they and their children were suffering from a raft of medical conditions after being poisoned by fracking fluids and other chemicals, the Elys never, ever took their children to a doctor to discuss the illnesses–not once. And the Elys are not unsophisticated people who would not have had access to medical experts. Monica Ely is a dentist who would have friends and colleagues who could help her access the best tests and best experts available. But they didn’t even bother having their children tested–despite the fact that the Elys kept telling their children and the world’s media that they had been poisoned. In fact, the Elys were so unconcerned with the state of their water on the property that after they claimed it was poisoned they went ahead and built a $1 million mansion on the property.

Scott Ely was a very unimpressive witness. But perhaps the lowest moment was when he tried to fix a problematic timeline (that he set up) but fatally undermined his credibility. Scott had told three different people–a doctor, a hydrologist, and in a handwritten statement to his own lawyer–that the water problems started in August 2008. However, his lawyer has also told the court that they all accept drilling did not start on nearby gas wells until late September/October 2008. So on the witness stand, Scott suddenly remembered–eight years after the case started–that in June/July 2008 he remembered a massive gas leak at a gas well that he was claiming must have affected his water.

“I pulled up on that location. The location was shut down. Gas was spewing out of ground….It stunk like crazy everybody was evacuated from the location….You can see the gas up around the rig,” he told the jury. Except that he was then forced to admit that natural gas is invisible and odorless. So the jury will have to believe Scott Ely has superhuman powers, or they will have to assume that he is a dishonest witness.

Monica Ely has been shown to be an extremely dodgy witness also. Apart from neglecting to bring her children to the doctor–even though she thought they had been poisoned by fracking–Ms Ely also portrayed herself as someone who tried to shield her children from the politicking and contentious debate around fracking. She testified that she tried “not to involve our kids with this.” Then the Cabot lawyers pointed out and produced photos (see above) that showed far from sheltering her children Ms Ely had in fact “brought them to press conferences, rallies with people like [actor] Mark Ruffalo, taken them to the Tribeca Film festival,” and had allowed them to be featured in the highly contentious documentary Gasland.

The plaintiffs’ expert witnesses are pretty awful also. Hydrologist Paul Rubin gave evidence on Friday where, after posing as a neutral scientist, he admitted he had “come into this case with a bias against non-renewable energy exploration.”

And Paul Rubin’s methodology is unorthodox to say the least. In breach of every acceptable international standard, he allowed Scott Ely to collect the water supplies that he analyzed with no checks or attempts to ensure the water was collected properly.

For Uncle Tony, Charity Really Does Begin at Home

Dr. Ingraffea is the expert of choice for anti-fracking activists and a former professor at Cornell University. He has worked for major oil companies and has the demeanor of a disinterested academic explaining complex science to the little people. He had an avuncular air and when the friendly uncle joked, the jury laughed; when he was serious, they listened. And, he told them that Cabot had allowed natural gas to contaminate the water wells of the Ely and Hubert families. He was so disinterested, he told the jury, that he wasn’t asking to be paid for all the hours he spent working on the case.  He didn’t want to be making money off the case, so he asked that his fee be donated to charity.At least, that’s what he told his lawyer, Leslie “Leading Questions” Lewis.

But the plaintiffs’ case again started to crumble as soon as Professor Ingraffea was questioned by the lawyer for Cabot. The lawyer got Ingraffea to admit that he was far removed from the “independent” academic he claimed to be. He was an anti-shale gas advocate, he admitted.

“I am an advocate for an energy policy that results in there being a limitation on the development of oil and gas from shale formations, yes,” Mr. Ingraffea said.

It turns out that Professor Ingraffea wasn’t above fiddling with the scientific process to promote his “opposition to shale gas. Period.” The Cabot lawyers uncovered a video where Professor Ingraffea was addressing an anti-fracking meeting in Colorado. Professor Ingraffea admitted that, yes, he was on the tape telling the group that he “would be lying if [he] said every one of [his] papers on shale gas was entirely objective.”

Professor Ingraffea couldn’t remember if he spoke to a rally in New York where he called for the crowd to “let the people of New York, that run the show, know that you don’t need fossil fuels.” He couldn’t recall making the statement, but he was quite clear that his scientific role was one of advocate for science–but not to be an activist “carrying placards, participating in protests, sitting in offices, shouting people down…those are activist actions I don’t do,” he told the jury. Except that the defense had footage and photographs of Ingraffea at rallies where people were holding up anti-fracking signs, shouting people down, etc. Professor Ingraffea said he never attended a rally “willingly.” It wasn’t clear just how Professor Ingraffea had been at the rallies unwillingly.

And what about that noble decision to not personally benefit from giving testimony? Well, that wasn’t quite what it appeared. The charity that Professor Ingraffea wanted his fee paid to, it emerged during questioning, was a charity the professor founded. He was at one time the president and was now a senior fellow for the organization. It was, Professor Ingraffea told the jury, “his favorite charity.” No surprise there.

You can see, from my brief recap of Phelim McAleeer’s coverage just how badly things are going for the fractivist case that was Dimock and there’s more to come, no doubt, as Cabot now puts on their case. Everything to this point has been the plaintiffs stepping all over themselves and it’s been a stampede, which leads to a question that goes well beyond my opening one about the absence of the media and other clowns.

Yes, the bigger questions is this; when will Andrew Como wake up and reverse his ridiculous decision of December, 2014 banning fracking “at this time.” That was when Governor “Gumby” Cuomo, on recommendation of his childless Health Commissioner, Dr. Zucker, who gave a passionate statement  about not wanting his children playing near a gas well, made a decision based on junk science we now know was just that. It’s time every upstater demanded this totally political, bought and paid for ban on high volume hydraulic fracturing in New York be immediately set aside so drilling can begin. Absent that, we can only hope and pray Preet Bahara has his eyes wide open on the blatant misuse and abuse of the governors office.