The IEHN coalition filed 12 fracking-related shareholder resolutions last year, and all of those that went for a vote got enough votes to qualify to be refiled this year.

"On average, the proposals received about 30% of the vote, which is substantial for a first-year environmental proposal," Ruoff says. "It took many years for issues to get that many votes, including global warming. That shows how important the issue is to the companies and their shareholders." She notes that 2011 will be another active year for shareholder resolutions.

For its part, the gas industry says it's trying to be environmentally responsible. It's also quick to point out what it perceives as misconceptions about fracking. For starters, fracking in the Marcellus is done a mile beneath the surface, which the industry says is far too deep to affect aquifers that typically are no more than 300 feet deep. And industry groups say numerous independent studies conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ground Water Protection Council have concluded that fracking doesn't contaminate groundwater.

"You don't see a vertical migration of fractures and their contents up a mile to the subsurface," says Kathryn Klaber, executive director of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a Canonsburg, Pa.-based trade group for the drilling, pipeline and service companies working the Marcellus region.

But accidents happen in the drilling process at the surface level. Klaber says her group, as well as government regulators, are focusing most of their attention on minimizing surface spills. She also notes that increased disclosure requirements about chemicals used in fracking have led to improvement in that area. "When you get pressure and scrutiny, you get innovation, and that's resulted in fewer--and more innocuous--compounds to do the job," she says.

Fracking critics say that's a step in the right direction, but still more needs to be done. "None of them do full disclosure on the chemicals used in fracking," says Michael Passoff, a senior strategist at As You Sow, a San Francisco-based shareholder advocacy group that's a leading player in the IEHN coalition. "In many ways, that's the bottom line for the whole issue."

Keep It Clean
Can fracking be environmentally friendly? And how is that defined? After all, this is about extracting a commodity from the earth, which is inherently dirty work.

Fracking isn't a newbie technology. It was first used in 1947, and it's estimated that 90% of the wells currently operating in the U.S. have been fracked. According to the National Petroleum Council, 60% to 80% of new wells might have to be fracked to remain viable. But environmental concerns about fracking are legitimate, and reveal the awkward trade-off that is being made-possible environmental degradation-in pursuit of a so-called clean energy source.

As for greenhouse gas emissions, natural gas releases less carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulates and mercury than oil or coal. But its high methane content raises concerns because methane traps heat more than 20 times more effectively than carbon dioxide. Still, a study conducted by the EPA and the Gas Research Institute (now the Gas Technology Institute) in 1997 concluded that the reduced greenhouse emissions from natural gas use outweigh the impact from increased methane emissions.

In Pennsylvania, the fracking issue has pitted farmers, landowners and towns happy to lease their land to drillers against environmentalists and others, including the city of Philadelphia, which is far removed from the Marcellus but fears contamination of the Delaware River watershed that supplies drinking water to millions of people. The city has urged a ban on fracking in the upper Delaware River basin until environmental studies are finished.