Energy production is the only way for the region to shake off the malaise of deindustrialization.
Energy production is the only way for the region to shake off the malaise of deindustrialization.
I n January, longtime Pennsylvania congressman Matthew Cartwright will be leaving Capitol Hill. So, too, will the scion of Scranton, Senator Bob Casey Jr., whatever his protestations to the contrary. The massive electoral losses of Democrats in this month’s elections in Pennsylvania illustrate more than President-elect Donald Trump’s opportunity. They signal real disappointment in the failure of elected Democrats to support economic empowerment for northeast Pennsylvanians through natural gas drilling.
Energy production has long been the backbone of this region’s economy. Honesdale, my hometown, owes its creation in large part to the fortunes of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, which it once headquartered. The company became an engine of economic development for the communities of the Poconos through its transportation of coal down the Delaware River to New York’s five boroughs. Reduced coal production has led to the region’s decline.
Northeast Pennsylvania has attempted to adapt to the changing times. My town has tried to harness the tourism industry through Oktoberfest and our summer camps. Unfortunately, there has still been a huge toll on the community. Deaths of despair proliferated, whether from the prescription Oxycontin given out like candy to our neighbors, or from the heroin grown abroad and sent across our southern border. Fentanyl has become the final form of the crisis. Emergency service volunteers now put on gloves to move patients on gurneys lest they inadvertently touch a victim and die of fentanyl exposure. I was born in the early 2000s, so this is the Pennsylvania I have known my entire life.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a resource under northeastern Pennsylvanians’ feet that could rescue the region. NEPA, as northeast Pennsylvania is fondly called by its residents, could become the Norway of the Mid-Atlantic states through natural gas drilling.
Other parts of the state have already reaped the benefits of safe, clean, and affordable natural gas. Fracking provided about $10 billion in revenue to Pennsylvania landowners between 2010 and 2018 through royalties. The state’s impact fee has raised $2.7 billion since 2012. That money is earmarked for infrastructure improvements, conservation efforts, and tax reductions. In 2023, the industry employed more than 30,000 people. The regions in Pennsylvania that have instituted natural gas drilling have seen marked economic improvement. The counties that implemented natural gas drilling have seen GDP growth that is two and a half times that of the nation as a whole and four times the rate of Pennsylvania’s state growth.
Those other areas have removed their bans on drilling as fracking has become safer and the benefits of drilling have become obvious. In Dimorick Township, Coterra Energy Inc. will begin drilling eleven gas wells after satisfying state environmental regulators. The company is committed to health and safety standards, and has pledged to monitor the drinking water within 3,000 feet of the new gas wells.
Yet a partisan body known as the Delaware River Basin Commission is preventing northeast Pennsylvania from accessing this lifeblood of economic development. Rather than being made up of a panel of experts, the commission is composed ex officio of the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers North Atlantic Division and the governors of New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. Alternate commissioners can also be appointed by each individual ex officio member.
The commission was created in 1961 to oversee the “planning, design and operation of all projects and facilities in the basin which affect its water resources.” This ostensible goal has been twisted to justify depriving northeast Pennsylvanians of clean and affordable energy — the same energy from which their in-state neighbors just a few miles away benefit.
Safely developing northeast Pennsylvania’s natural gas reserves is impossible right now thanks to a de facto moratorium on fracking that has been in place since 2010; the Delaware River Basin Commission strengthened it in February 2021. Attempts to reverse the ban have repeatedly failed in court.
This legal stalemate endures while natural gas provides heat for stoves and homes all across the nation. In Pennsylvania, support for fracking has only grown, according to polling by Muhlenberg College.
Democrats’ support for natural gas drilling has been lackluster at best. In January 2024, President Biden halted new natural gas export terminals. This resulted in a comical campaign ad by Pennsylvania senator Bob Casey Jr. that argued he “bucked Biden to protect fracking.” The intra-party fighting was not enough to save Casey’s reelection campaign.
Now that Donald Trump has won a second presidential term, he should ask the governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware to overturn the River Basin Commission’s moratorium. If they fail to do that, he should marshal as much support as possible, and ask Congress to modify the federal legislation that created the commission so that the power over the Pennsylvania River Basin returns to Pennsylvania taxpayers. This is the only way for the northeast to shake off the malaise of deindustrialization.