Bradford County, Pennsylvania and its municipalities are set to share more than $10.8 million in natural-gas impact-fee revenue generated during the 2024 production year, money that local officials say has funded new public buildings and infrastructure even as neighboring New York maintains a ban on high-volume hydraulic fracturing now in its second decade.
The figure comes from state Rep. Clint Owlett and state Sen. Gene Yaw, who reported that Bradford County itself received more than $3.9 million of that total, with the county's municipalities collectively taking in more than $6.9 million, according to repowlett.com. Statewide, nearly $165 million in impact fees was generated for the 2024 production year, and since the fee system began under Act 13 in 2012, nearly $2.9 billion has flowed back to Pennsylvania communities, per that same report. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission separately confirmed it distributed $164,592,500 in impact fees collected for the 2024 reporting year, according to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.
A separate report from the same regional outlet noted Bradford County's Act 13 allocation climbed by a little more than $2 million over the prior year, which the Public Utility Commission attributed to rising natural-gas prices and new-well production, the station's report states.
A County Commissioner's Case For Drilling
Doug McLinko, an elected commissioner in Bradford County, has pointed to new local construction as evidence of the payoff, according to the New York Post. McLinko said the county built a new 911 center costing $20 million, a new sheriff's center and veterans center, and installed a historically accurate copper courthouse roof costing $4 million, all per his account relayed in that report. He also said the county had not raised taxes for more than 20 years until the year before publication, and that it is installing its own rural broadband network and benefiting from gas-company investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in local roads.
McLinko told the Post that fracking has benefited schools, working families and retired people, and he said Bradford County residents know they help power America. He also said he has had no groundwater contamination issues and that he personally receives royalty checks for a portion of land he owns, saying those payments significantly improved his life. McLinko criticized New York's fracking ban as irresponsible, per the same account.
Royalties And Infrastructure On The Pennsylvania Side
Pennsylvania mandates a minimum royalty payout of 12.5% to landowners, and landowners with a well on their property can receive anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars monthly, according to the Post's reporting. Local municipalities in Bradford County receive more than $6.9 million in Act 13 impact-fee allocations, separate from private landowner royalties.
The county's gas infrastructure includes around 1,500 active wells, roughly 1,200 miles of gathering lines, around 60 compressor stations and 100 freshwater taps, per the Post's account of local data. Bradford County treats its fracking sludge locally, and that same infrastructure is described as absent just across the state line in Chemung County, New York.
The View From New York's Side Of The Border
Chemung County, home to the city of Elmira, lies across the New York-Pennsylvania border from Bradford County. Tom Santulli, a former Chemung County executive, recalled that during the fracking boom the area had crowded malls, high sales taxes, visitors from Texas and Louisiana, and scarce hotel rooms, according to the Post. Santulli said he believed fracking would reshape the Southern Tier, but New York opposed it.
New York banned high-volume hydraulic fracturing in 2014 under then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, citing environmental concerns about toxic byproducts and groundwater contamination risks, per the Post's reporting. That timeline aligns with findings from fractracker.org, which documented the statewide ban taking effect in 2014. A New York State environmental review found that some hydraulic-fracturing wastewater discharges increased contaminant concentrations in receiving surface waters, and that below-ground movement of fluids, including gas, had contaminated drinking-water resources, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
Where The Drilling Waste Went After The Ban
Pennsylvania shipped fracking waste to New York for processing even after New York's ban took effect, per the Post's analysis, and fractracker.org's review of state waste data shows the Chemung County Landfill in Lowman received more than 80,000 tons of solid drilling waste from Pennsylvania in 2014, before New York's statewide ban fully curtailed new drilling. New York closed what has been described as its fracking loophole in 2020, requiring the state's Department of Environmental Conservation to stop exempting oil and gas activities from hazardous-material scrutiny, and in 2020 the Chemung facility was the only landfill in New York State still receiving Pennsylvania drilling waste.
Hydraulic fracturing works by injecting water, sand and chemicals underground under explosive force to fracture rock and release trapped gas, a process described by ProPublica. That same reporting noted that produced water from Marcellus gas drilling can carry natural toxics from the shale layer, including hydrocarbons and cancer-causing compounds such as benzene, toluene and xylene, as well as radioactivity from uranium ore.
Politics Of The Ban Resurface In The Governor's Race
The contrast between the two counties has become a flashpoint in New York politics. Republican gubernatorial challenger Bruce Blakeman criticized New York's fracking ban during an Oct. 13 gubernatorial debate, according to the Post, and said Pennsylvania residents get jobs and drive new Cadillac Escalades while New Yorkers drive old rusted pickup trucks because of state policies. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who opposes fracking in New York, has said the state will not frack or burn coal and will not go backwards, and she has prioritized solar and wind farms as the state's energy sources, per the same report. Rural New Yorkers have in turn opposed solar and wind farm development, the Post noted.
Both Bradford County and Chemung County sit atop the Marcellus Shale, a natural gas reserve spanning several eastern states that is described as the largest natural gas production field in the United States. The divergence in policy on either side of that shared geology remains central to the dispute over whether New York's ban has cost or spared its border communities, a question that is shaping debate ahead of the state's gubernatorial race.
