Are natural gas representatives knocking at your door? MIT unveils “extrAct”, civic tools for Colorado communities affected by the extraction industry
Release Date: February 28, 2011
Andrew Whitacre
|
Contact:
Andrew Whitacre
MIT Center for Future Civic Media
(617) 324-0490 |
Contact:
|
Are natural gas representatives knocking at your door? MIT unveils “extrAct”, civic tools for Colorado communities affected by the extraction industry
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (February 28, 2011) - The MIT Center for Future Civic Media is reaching out to Colorado landowners with its new suite of technologies for use by communities impacted by natural gas development.
extrAct, including its “Landman Report Card” and “WellWatch” tools, is a novel platform for community education and civic action.
Outlets like 60 Minutes (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/12/60minutes/main7048737.shtml) and the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27gas.html) have reported on both the unprecedented opportunities and health risks of American natural gas extraction, touted as the country’s path to energy independence.
But landowners in Colorado “are being targeted for drilling,” said Garfield County resident, activist, and MIT partner Tara Meixsell. “They are finding gas and oil landmen on their doorsteps and presented with leases promising monetary gains for allowing the gas and oil companies to drill on or under their properties.”
So Meixsell worked with the MIT Center for Future Civic Media to build the extrAct tools, helping citizens and grassroots organizations take advantage of drilling opportunities while mitigating or pushing back strongly against their risks, with a special focus on the needs of Coloradans. Landman Report Card works for dealing with industry salespeople while WellWatch takes hard-to-use state databases of leaks and noncompliance with environmental laws and turns them into easy-to-use webpages, searchable by address.
Both MIT tools help impacted communities and individuals more easily access data about wells and operators in their communities. And more importantly, landowners get to add their own considerable knowledge.
Meixsell has been long-time member of Grand Valley Citizen's Alliance and Western Colorado Congress before working with MIT. “Our landowners are caught hugely unaware of what they may be signing off to, and of the implications to the future health and environmental impacts and their legal rights as landowners... Many of them have no idea what their legal rights are in this situation, and feel pressured to sign before they find out what better options may be available."
“Landowners around the country are facing significant challenges when coping with leaking wells, industrial traffic, and air and water pollution. They have serious concerns about their health and property value,“ said MIT Center for Future Civic Media director Chris Csikszentmihályi. “The extrAct tools give them ways to document, share, and communicate their experiences. For the first time, a rural landowner in Pennsylvania who is contemplating signing a lease can read about the experiences of a rancher in Colorado who has been dealing with these issues for twenty years. And an epidemiologist, journalist, or regulator using extrAct can survey a wide range of citizen’s experiences.”
Explore and use Landman Report Card (http://www.landmanreportcard.com/) and WellWatch (http://scrapper.media.mit.edu/wiki/WellWatch).
-----------------------
The MIT Center for Future Civic Media supports research at MIT to innovate civic media tools and practices and test them in communities. The Center works to create technical and social systems for sharing, prioritizing, organizing, and acting on information. It is a joint effort between the MIT Media Lab and the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and is made possible by a four-year grant from the Knight Foundation.
Andrew Whitacre
Communications Manager
MIT Center for Future Civic Media
(617) 324-0490
awhit@mit.edu
