The climax of a three-day “Stop the Frack Attack” anti-hydraulic fracturing (fracking) rally in Washington, DC, on Saturday had been advertised by its organizers as an event that would bring “thousands of people from across the U.S. and around the globe” to protest the practice.

But based on online videos and other independent reports, attendees appear to have numbered only in the hundreds, and some of the scheduled “visuals” — including the delivery of “jugs of contaminated water” to the offices of natural gas industry organizations by activists wearing hazmat suits — apparently didn’t go off as demonstrators had hoped.

“We understand some of the rally folks turned up but don’t have any reports about fracking fluid,” an America’s Petroleum Institute (API) spokesman told NGI’s Shale Daily. “Since it was a Saturday, no one was around to observe much.”

A video on the “Stop the Frack Attack” website shows approximately 200 protesters chanting “we don’t need no fracking, let the corporations burn” in front of API headquarters. There were no reports of fracking fluid being delivered to America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) headquarters, which had been specifically targeted by rally organizers.

“Stop the Frack Attack” organizers said 136 local and national organizations participated in the protest, which they said was endorsed by several celebrity activists, including Mark Ruffalo, Ed Begley Jr., Margo Kidder, Cornel West and Josh Fox, director of the controversial film Gasland.

The protest was organized “to call on Congress to take action to protect community rights, public health, drinking water, and the global climate from the impacts of fracking…[and to] demand the closure of legal loopholes that allow the oil and gas industry to ignore parts of the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and other bedrock environmental laws while fracking.”

ANGA seemed unfazed by the latest anti-fracking demonstration.

“We would encourage folks to take the time to hear both sides of the story, to think critically about what they hear and to listen — not just to industry — but to the many leading scientists, policymakers and academics who have studied these issues and come to the conclusion that natural gas can be responsibly developed, and in pursuing this path, we can unlock tremendous environmental, economic and energy security benefits for our nation,” said ANGA spokesman Dan Whitten.

Organizers used Sierra Club offices in downtown Washington, DC, for some of their sessions, and included obstructionist training sessions and lobbying of Congress in their agenda (see Shale Daily, July 27).