Reviews

Times Leader Staff:

“… a bombshell that could reverberate across the state.”

Ohio Resident, Julie R.

It rang scientifically true and correct. Many films about fracking, either pro or con, tend to be a bit “attention grabbing and sensational” not a bad thing regardless of your take on the subject because films are a message media rather than just a documentation of a scientific experience. Triple Divide and the recent Chasing Ice are films that document a scientific reality. I am very appreciative when a film “gets it right” actually reports a scientific process or situation as it is, rather than grabs attention with an over the wall presentation or something that is fabricated.  Short of Nova, Nature and Cosmos, I don’t often see straight science. That’s what Triple Divide gave the audience and why it is so devastating, because it is real.

Rotten Tomatoes:

Neither partisan nor hyperbolic, Triple Divide is an honest look at an industry that deserves more scrutiny. The film explores and uncovers the haphazard way in which natural gas has been exploited in Pennsylvania, causing significant damage to formerly-pristine waterways. It clearly illustrates through painstaking investigative journalism how current safety measures and industry standards have proven entirely inadequate. I highly recommend this film to anyone who lives in the immediate area of hydraulic natural gas fracking, as well as those downstream from a drilling site. – Andrew Riedy, Security Policy (Washington, D.C.) 

Vimeo:

★★★★★

Best movie on fracking to date, facts not fiction or spin. – Robert Donnan, Shale Researcher/Pennsylvania 

Columbus, OH Screening:

“It’s hard to imagine anyone could have a fully-informed opinion about fracking without seeing Triple Divide.  The filmmakers use cold hard facts and first-hand accounts to show how this industry is impacting real people.  If you liked Gasland, you’ll love Triple Divide.” – Jed Thorp, Ohio Sierra Club

Rotten Tomatoes:

★★★★★

This film will inspire anyone to form an opinion, and change many others! Great Cinematography as well, for their first production, I’m Impressed! - Red Gables Mesquite Grill 

Vimeo:

★★★★★

An eye opening and absolute must see. There is no way to turn away from facts and the truth which, with great documentaries like this one, will hopefully create change in the way these companies impact our communities and help oil the slow moving machines of government given the task to protects us from such dangers. great work Joshua B. Pribanic and the rest of the team! – Jock Armour, Actor/Screenwriter

“Triple Divide put such a human face on the devastation caused by fracking…” - Sister Marlene Bertke, Benedictine Sister for Peace 

Public Herald Member

“Triple Divide is a sophisticated film that takes its viewers on a journey to find the truth. Through the firsthand testimonies and overall structure of the documentary, viewers enjoy the fruits of meticulous research and high-quality investigative journalism. Although Triple Divide covers one of the most serious and time-sensitive environmental issues of our time, it also offers many beautiful shots, ones that you would imagine seeing in a fine art film. That is the brilliance of Triple Divide: it captures our hearts and delights our tastes for aesthetic beauty while revealing the severity of an unjust reality, a reality that we can change for the better. We must collectively defeat and overcome the false promises, outright lies, and manipulations of the fracking industry, both in the United States and globally. Our state of health, environment, and future are all on the line. We may not have all of the answers and solutions to our energy challenges fully developed and worked out, but we do know, thanks to documentary projects like Triple Divide, that fracking has never been and will Never be an answer, Not in the short-run or in the long-run. Thank you to the filmmakers of Triple Divide for further communicating and illuminating that truth.”

2012 test-screenings:

The very best Documentary on the hazards of fracking on our environment. You must see this. – Organizations United for the Environment 

  • Lisa DeSantis

    I recently attended the screening of “Triple Divide” at the B&O Railroad Station in Youngstown, Ohio, not my first viewing and probably not my last. Although the venues change the audiences’ change, one thing never changes – The Industries Charade is falling down. Crumbling like a cracked well casing, leaking the cover ups, back room deals and payoffs. Reports that “there has never been any water wells contaminated” are being fractured. We as Pennsylvania Citizens are guaranteed …… “The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment,” and in my duty to protect these things for my children, I have been labeled an ‘Eco-terrorist.’
    I live in a Lawrence County, a County that has sold it’s land, parks, schools, game lands, farm lands and fields. A County that is giving away the Shenango River for the frack of it. The Industry can just pull up, file some paper work, pay a fee to the DEP and start sucking millions of gallons of water a day. The PA Department of Protection*(DEP) is making BANK on this Industry, and on their mistakes, but we the people are left with the consequences when they end up in our rivers, our land and our air. When will clean water be more valuable the dirty fracking flow-back water?

    FIGHT FOR WATER BEFORE YOU HAVE TO FIGHT FOR WATER!

    • conradshull

      I suspect the reason you want to see this over and over is not (this I am sure of) to encounter a balanced presentation of the subject, but rather to “crank up” your own already settled opinions to a higher pitch. It’s the same reason people listen to Rush Limbaugh every day, not to learn the truth about anything, but to wrap their own established sharply held opinions in even more and more layers of “validation”. I live in Williamsport, ground zero for drilling and hydrofracturing. I have no vested interest in any of this activity. I make not one penny from this. My wife and I own a double rental and we did not kick out our tenants so we could jack up the rent to get gas worker’s money (like many others did). I want to make it clear I have no financial dog in the fight. I have many friends, who like you, are apoplectic about the activity, yet as I travel the surrounding countryside, I do not see the “calamity” they, and you, describe with frequent exaggeration and a whole lot of hyperbole. Sure 10 acre pads are cleared in the woods and fields, but these are temporary and end up as one and two acre wellheads. The trees grow back surprisingly fast. I know. I grew up in on a farm and in the woods. As for “devastated” waterways, this is mostly in the anti-frackers wishful imaginations. Confronted with this fact (there is no endemic waterway harm happening), the standard retort is , “Well, it could happen.” Hmm. Could happen is a pretty open ended concept. Just thinking about it, though, I’ve got another “could happen”. The tanks that hold the highly toxic chemicals needed to manufacture photovoltaic panels “could” burst and overflow their containment buffers. If this happens, it is possible thousands in the vicinity would die. This is what “could happen is”.

      • Public Herald

        Dear conradshull,

        No one needs to be convinced that any benefits related to the fracking industry are already good — that fact should not need investigation. (Or does it?) Triple Divide is an investigation of impacts and how they are being handled for the purpose of analyzing a very real part of an industrial process that is consuming Pennsylvania at an alarming rate.

        As for “balanced” we at Public Herald, creators of Triple Divide, are ethically and morally against falsely balancing an unbalanced situation. Besides, did you not hear Chesapeake Energy in the film? Did you not see the President of the Marcellus Shale Coalition responding to water contamination concerns?

        Please see http://publicfiles.org/complaints/water-complaints/bradford-county/ for water complaints related to unconventional oil and gas extraction collected from file reviews at state offices. While not all of these complaints lead to determinations by the state of water contamination due to extraction, there are ONGOING methane migration and water quality & quantity issues occurring as a direct result from extraction. (We have the data at PublicFiles.org and more.)

        Any tank holding any liquid from hydrochloric acid to rainwater can burst at any time, but that’s not what concerned residents across Pennsylvania and other states are worried about. They are worried about the tens of thousands of permanent holes being punched through fresh groundwater sources and the ensuing air pollution released from the massive industrial infrastructure the industry requires. Oh, and then there’s climate change.

        If you have any documentation to back up your “fact” that water contamination is merely “wishful imagination” we’d be happy to review it.

        PHOTO (from Triple Divide): Map of Chesapeake Energy’s cement squeezes, or attempts to stop underground methane and fluid migration through their unconventional wells. 23 cement squeezes in a 28 mile radius. “Ouch,” say the groundwater aquifers of Bradford County.

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  • GDAC

    Well researched and documented. Watching this documentary will open your eyes to the truth about natural gas drilling in Pa and how unsustainable the practice really is. PA needs to be a leader in alternative sustainable energy development. This fossil fuel development, and particularly shale gas and oil exploration and extraction will leave a legacy of polluted land, air and water for future generations as recently testified by the senior judge that struck down the Act 13 appeal.

  • Briget Shields

    Thank you to the film makers of Triple Divide. An honest documentary exposing the truth about the toxic unconventional gas industry. We are grateful to have such an informative and well done film to educate others on the toxic contamination of our air, water, health and especially our democracy. Thank you for all you continue to do.