Park Foundation Spends Millions On Anti-Drilling Efforts

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

April 16, 2012 | 10:28 AM

$frackprotests1$

Todd Vachon / WHYY

Anti-drilling protests in Philadelphia

Who funds the anti-drilling groups? The Park Foundation foots the bill for many environmental groups who are working to stop drilling from going into effect in New York, as Gannett reports:

Since 2009, the Park Foundation has quietly spread around more than $3 million to dozens of advocacy groups and other institutions that oppose hydrofracking or to those that have produced research on the technique, according to a Gannett Albany Bureau review of tax filings and information on the non-profit’s website.
The foundation appears to be the most prominent financial backer of the anti-hydrofracking movement in New York. And while it doesn’t actively tout its involvement in the anti-fracking effort, the group doesn’t hide from it either.
…The roster of the foundation’s beneficiaries is long, and it reads like a who’s who list of those fighting against hydrofracking in New York and beyond.
The foundation sent a total of $175,000 in 2010 and 2011 to the production company behind “Gasland,” an Oscar-nominated documentary on the negative environmental aspects of hydrofracking that has drawn ire from the gas industry.