By PAUL GRONDAHL
Albany Times-Union
ALBANY — It was not the sexiest issue making the rounds of the Capitol during the summer doldrums: the injection of water and chemicals under high pressure into rock formations to extract natural gas.
The grass-roots environmental group Frack Action had failed to gain traction in its homegrown fight against the powerful gas and oil industry and the clean water advocates struggled to draw media attention for its opposition to hydrofracking in New York state.
Then they tapped the celebrity of actor Mark Ruffalo, and the curly-haired, darkly handsome star of “Shutter Island” and “The Kids Are All Right” turned out to be a godsend.
“The issue was pretty much dead until we brought Mark on board. Suddenly, people started to pay attention,” said Susan Zimet, director of Frack Action, which has an unpaid staff of three and a cadre of volunteers.
“This issue affects Mark personally and he’s gotten deeply involved. He has a long reach. Every cause should have a celebrity like him,” she said.
Ruffalo, a Catskills resident, does more than write a check and show up for photos. He immersed himself in the battle against fracking because he and his wife and their three children drink water from a well and he fears it could be contaminated by toxic chemicals used in hydrofracking.
“It’s a question of clean water and our health and our kids’ health,” Ruffalo said. “People can deny global warming, but they can’t deny we all need clean water. Folks are finally waking up to what’s at stake here.”
As an unpaid volunteer, Ruffalo attended dozens of meetings and hearings and worked tirelessly by phone and e-mail for the cause. He traveled to Albany and lobbied with Pete Seeger and Frack Action activists. He visited college campuses across the state to raise awareness about the issue among students. He arranged for a private screening in Manhattan of “Gasland,” an anti-fracking HBO documentary by Josh Fox, and invited several actor friends. That helped Ruffalo convince Ethan Hawke, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Debra Winger, Tim Robbins and other actors lend their A-list names to the fight against fracking.
“Mark is as dedicated as anybody on this issue,” said Craig Michaels, watershed program director of Riverkeeper, an environmental organization whose mission is to defend the Hudson River and the drinking water supply of 9 million New York City and Hudson Valley residents.
“He’s a really smart guy and brings a lot of talent to the table aside from his celebrity,” Michaels said. “He’s been extremely effective. He’s willing to be out there in the field all the time, on the ground with us.”
Ruffalo has joined forces at anti-fracking events with Riverkeeper’s own marquee name, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the group’s chief prosecuting attorney and son of the slain U.S. senator. The two traveled together to Dimock, Pa., ground zero for anti-fracking advocates, where wells were reportedly contaminated by chemicals used in hydrofracking and residents famously lighted their tap water on fire to illustrate the problem.
“The people in Dimock were so desperate for Bobby Kennedy to come and save them,” Ruffalo said. “These people had nobody else to speak for them. I decided then and there that I couldn’t sit by and watch. I had to get deeply involved.”
Ruffalo, a critically acclaimed actor who has been likened to a young Marlon Brando, took more than a year off from film work so he could immerse himself in the anti-fracking fight. In April, he’ll start filming “The Avengers,” a superhero action movie. with a cast that includes Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Samuel L. Jackson. Ruffalo plays Dr. Bruce Banner, aka The Hulk.
In a recent telephone interview from his home in Callicoon in Sullivan County, along the Delaware River near the Pennsylvania border, Ruffalo sounded almost apologetic about how dramatically his involvement has raised the anti-fracking profile.
“The unfortunate fact of the matter is that my voice just happens to reach a lot farther than most,” he said.
Ruffalo feels a twinge of discomfort when he arrives for an anti-fracking event and encounters fans lining up for autographs. He’ll gamely pose for cellphone shots alongside teenage girls who consider him a heartthrob for his role in “13 Going on 30″ or women drawn to his smoky-voiced hyper-sexuality (and plenty of nudity) on display in “The Kids Are All Right.”
“It starts as a curiosity and a fan thing, but it very quickly transcends that when they realize here’s a guy who’s really passionate about this issue,” Ruffalo said. “That star-struck thing melts away when I speak with authority about fracking and they see me as an educator.”
Reactions from his agent and P.R. people are lukewarm, at best.
“They’d prefer that I was doing a GQ shoot,” he said. “I jam on this because it’s my cause whether they’re on board with it or not.”
Ruffalo has a vested interest. He fell in love with the Catskills when he shot “You Can Count on Me” there in 1995. “It’s a magical, precious place,” he said. He promptly emptied his bank account of $5,000, all he had saved, and purchased a small cabin in the woods.
He spent time at the Catskills cabin between film jobs and cherished the region’s natural resources after living and working in Los Angeles. “We take water for granted in New York, but I’ve lived out in California where there isn’t enough water and the land is drying up,” he said. “I was thrilled to have water everywhere in the Catskills, but I also realize how precious it is.”
As their family grew, Ruffalo and his wife, Sunrise — they have three kids, ages 3, 5 and 9 — began looking for a bigger home. They bought a farmhouse and 47-acre former dairy farm. “We were fighting so hard to live in New York City, we just decided to simplify our lives and moved up here full-time,” he said. Their property once housed a hog farm, a fact that amuses Ruffalo, a vegetarian. He described Callicoon, a farming town of 3,000, as an eclectic mix of expatriate New York City artists and locals.
Fracking has cleaved those two cultures, creating tensions in his corner of the gas-rich Marcellus Shale zone. Ruffalo has grown accustomed to seeing “Friends of Natural Gas” signs planted in his neighbors’ yards. He’s made peace with the occasional dirty look he gets at the local Agway. He ignores whispers of derision overheard while waiting for a latte at the Cafe Devine on Lower Main Street. Still, Ruffalo calls his neighbors “gentle people and respectful and decent.”
He’s resisted placing a “No Fracking” sign in his yard. “I don’t do tit for tat and think it’s counterproductive,” he said. “They all know where I stand anyway. It’s pretty loud and clear.”
As a film actor who has earned millions of dollars, Ruffalo does not begrudge his neighbors, many of whom are financially stressed dairy farmers mired in debt and eager to reap a windfall of tens of thousands of dollars by leasing gas drilling rights.
“What the hell can I say to those people who have toiled on that land their entire lives and have nothing to show for it?” Ruffalo asked. “There’s an old gentleman farmer I’ve known for years. I love the guy and he leased his land to the gas company. I haven’t lost any respect for him. I get it.”
The fracking clash in his community is nothing compared to the flak Ruffalo received when he took a highly unpopular stand by coming out early and strongly in opposition to the Iraq war.
“A lot of actors were sitting on their hands about the Iraq war,” he said. “There was talk about a blacklist in Hollywood and my wife was afraid I was going to be blacklisted, but I was right, you know?”
Ruffalo grew in a working-class household — his dad was a painter in the construction industry and his mom was a hairdresser — in Wisconsin and Virginia. He traced his activism to studying acting with Stella Adler in Los Angeles. “She drilled into us that you have a political and a social responsibility as an artist,” he said. “If I don’t stand up for what I believe in, how can I look at myself in the mirror?”
He aspires to the activism of Seeger.
“I only knew Pete as one of my heroes for a long time and it was very cool to be with him,” Ruffalo said. “That guy’s free. Nobody owns him.”
Reach Paul Grondahl at 454-5623 or at pgrondahl@timesunion.com.