CITIZEN POWER ALLIANCE

Hollywood, meet one of the Southern Tier's most divisive issues.

Popular CBS television drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" took a crack at hydraulic fracturing -- a natural gas extraction technique -- with a storyline Thursday that centered around a fictional gas company, poisoned water and a pair of murders.

Titled "Fracked," the episode featured a journalist who was on the brink of exposing "Conservo Solutions" of contaminating water through hydrofracking when two of her sources turned up dead. At one point, a rancher set off a massive explosion when he dropped a cigarette down his water well.

While the episode ended inconclusively, the gas company was thought to be behind the killings to keep the story from getting out.

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