“Fracking the System,” a new documentary premiering on Feb. 23 at the Colorado Environmental Film Festival in Golden, features Boulder County residents and follows the journey of climate activists along the Front Range over the last decade as they fight against fracking.
Brian Hedden, the 37-year-old director of the film, has lived in Boulder for seven years. As shown in the documentary, his path into environmental filmmaking began at age 11 when he created a PSA about recycling. After moving to Boulder in 2017, with a film degree from NYU, his passion for environmentalism was rekindled by the re-release of World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity. In the update, scientists doubled down on the risk of coming “catastrophic climate change” due to burning fossil fuels.
Seeking a way to help combat the impending environmental crisis, Hedden embedded himself with local climate activists fighting fracking along the Front Range. Hedden said he observed what he calls “the powers that be,” including politicians favoring oil and gas interests, as well as companies putting a higher priority on production over the health of residents. Extraction Oil and Gas filed a complaint against him for an instance included in the film. The case was settled.
Hedden mainly funded the film himself, which he said left him bankrupt, though he also raised about $50,000 through crowdfunding.
“It’s part of a giant wave of movements,” Hedden said of the film. “These waves come and go, but they continue to come. I want this film to be a representation of waves in the past, and also an inspiration for waves in the future.”
Hedden filmed “Fracking the System” between 2017 and 2021, highlighting the health impacts of fracking in Boulder area communities. Residents in Longmont, Greeley and Broomfield share testimonies about nosebleeds in their children and respiratory distress.
“It’s kind of unusual to wake up without a sore throat or irritated eyes,” said Mackenzie Carignan, a resident of Broomfield who lives near drilling sites.
The film contends that the detrimental effects extend beyond those living near drilling pads, affecting residents along the Front Range who breathe in poor air. This is largely due to nearby oil and gas production releasing volatile organic compounds (VOCs), like benzene, during the extraction process. VOCs react with sunlight to form ground-level ozone, a toxic gas linked to respiratory ailments, heart attacks and strokes, making it an urgent public health threat on the Front Range.
Andrew Klooster, a Colorado field advocate for Earthworks — an environmental nonprofit — is featured in the first part of the documentary discussing emissions from drilling pads. Klooster films oil and gas operations with a special camera that reveals pollutants invisible to the naked eye.
“These cameras are basically infrared cameras but they have special filters that allow them to filter out most of the infrared spectrum and focus in on what compounds and gasses you want to see,” Klooster said in the film, referencing methane and benzene, a know human carcinogen.
Boulder Reporting Lab spoke to Klooster last summer about his work around Broomfield drilling pads.
“The whole conversation around oil and gas extraction, and the pollution it causes, would be very, very different if people could look at one of those big well pads in Broomfield and see the actual pollution that may be occurring at any given time,” Klooster told Boulder Reporting Lab.
Colorado’s health department detected high levels of benzene at Bella Romero, a K-8 school in Greeley, after drilling began near the school. Patricia Garcia-Nelson, who had a son at Bella Romero, became an activist when she found out about the pad and its possible health impacts.
“This was supposed to be behind the school with the white kids,” Garcia-Nelson said in the film. “But they didn’t want it there. So they brought it to the school with the brown kids. Because nobody cares about our kids, because they’re Mexican.”
The film alleged the pad was supposed to go behind a charter school with a wealthier and whiter population, Frontier Academy.
“Some of the parents got very activated at this charter school,” Therese Gilbert, a school teacher in Weld County, said in the film. “And they had resources, and some of them had time.”
Garcia-Nelson said the community at Bella Romero was much less activated.
“When you get into populations where a lot of the population is already marginalized, they’re not going to want to make noise,” Garcia-Nelson said in the film.
The film features Jonathan Singer, a Colorado State Representative from 2012 to 2021, who is now the senior director for policy programs at the Boulder Chamber. Singer discusses the oil and gas industry’s influence in Colorado, recalling a moment in 2013 when legislators wanted to allocate funds for enough oil and gas inspectors to visit each well at least once a year. The goal was to try to reduce leakages that can harm the health of nearby residents.
During their push for additional inspectors in the state budget, “the oil and gas lobby was literally in the lobby,” Singer said in the film, pulling aside lawmakers from both parties, telling them to oppose the measure.
He emphasized the stark contrast, stating at the house microphone, “I’m pretty sure we’ve got more oil and gas lobbyists in our lobby right now than we have oil and gas inspectors in the state.”
The film also shows former governor and current Senator John Hickenlooper, suggesting that oil and gas support was instrumental in his 2011 gubernatorial win. “They wanted someone they knew would not regulate them,” said Suzanne Spiegel, a Boulder County resident and anti-fracking activist featured in the film. The film features a now infamous clip of Hickenlooper asserting the safety of fracking fluid and claiming to have personally consumed it with Halliburton executives.
“We did drink it, around the table, almost ritual-like in a funny way,” he said during a 2013 senate testimony to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
Hickenlooper reappears in the film, threatening legal action against any city in Colorado that banned fracking, like Longmont. He then negotiates away Governor Jared Polis’ — then a U.S. representative — 2014 ballot measures. Those measures would have limited fracking in the state through mandatory setbacks between drilling sites and “occupied structures.” They also would have allowed local governments to enact more restrictive rules than the state’s to protect the environment.
Proposition 112 and its demise
The film mainly centers on the activist group Colorado Rising, dedicating the second half to its push to pass the 2018 ballot initiative Proposition 112, which sought to mandate minimum distance requirements for new oil and gas projects. Once the measure made it on the ballot, the industry spent millions fighting it. Ultimately, Proposition 112 failed with a vote of 55% to 45%.
Notably, the film does not include perspectives from oil and gas companies mentioned, like Extraction Oil and Gas, and does not provide a right of response from them or the featured politicians. Hedden said while he is “curious about the stories and perspectives of the oil industry workers themselves,” no film can cover every perspective.
“It just so happened that when I was making this film I became embedded with the activists and that was the perspective this film took,” he said. “This is just one perspective and one story,”
Hedden said he hopes the film inspires others to get involved and shows the complexity and hardship of activism.
“I wanted to kind of initiate younger activists into the struggle, but also acknowledge and reflect the brilliance and persistence of activists that have been struggling.”
For those looking to watch in the comfort of their own home, you can pre-order the film through the Colorado Environmental Film Festival’s online platform to watch on Feb. 26. If you’re interested in watching in-person, there are many options, with an April 25 screening scheduled for Boulder.
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