'Gasland' director asks Corbett to fire state aide over Nazi comment

The director of a documentary critical of natural-gas drilling called on Gov. Corbett yesterday to fire a state official who compared the filmmaker to the Nazi minister of propaganda in World War II.

"Gasland" director Josh Fox said the comments last week by Teddy Borawski, chief oil and gas geologist for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, were "absolutely outrageous."

Fox was especially incensed to be compared to Nazi Joseph Goebbels because his father and paternal grandparents are Holocaust survivors.

"This is severe right-wing wing-nut territory," Fox said. "Does this guy even know what a Nazi is? Does he know what they did?"

Corbett's staff was aware of Borawski's comments but did not respond to a request for comment.

Borawski yesterday said he could not comment on the remarks he made Thursday to the Pennsylvania Dutch chapter of the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters Association.

Asked about "Gasland," Borawski told the group: "Joseph Goebbels would have been proud. He would have given [Fox] the Nazi award. That, in my opinion, was a beautiful piece of propaganda."

"Gasland," which has been aired on HBO, focuses on hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," the process in which water and chemicals are pumped into the ground in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania and in other states to break up rock and release trapped natural gas.

In the film, some residents near fracking sites complain about water contamination and set their tap water on fire from the faucet to demonstrate the dangers.

Borawski's comments, first reported by the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, drew little attention until they were distributed to other media outlets yesterday by state Rep. Josh Shapiro, an Abington Democrat running for Montgomery County commissioner.

Shapiro, in an e-mail Sunday to Annmarie Kaiser, Corbett's secretary of legislative affairs, demanded that the governor condemn Borawski's comments and "take appropriate action" against him.

Shapiro yesterday called Borawski's comments "stunningly ignorant" but declined to say if he should be fired, saying that decision was in Corbett's hands.

"With his Nazi reference, he is seeking to discredit anyone who has a difference of opinion with the Corbett administration on the Marcellus Shale gas drilling," Shapiro said.

When Corbett ran for governor last year, he flatly rejected a proposed extraction tax on natural- gas drilling. His campaign received $835,720 from gas drillers.

Fox noted that James Powers, the state's director of homeland security, resigned in October after opponents of natural-gas drilling learned that he had approved a $103,000 state contract for a private company to keep track of their protests. Gov. Ed Rendell canceled the contract but defended Powers.