Impact Fee Advances…In West Virginia

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

December 16, 2011 | 1:08 PM

A Marcellus Shale impact fee may be stalled in Pennsylvania, but a similar bill cleared two West Virginia Senate committees today. From the AP:

The Senate version sets permit fees of $10,000 for an initial well and $5,000 for each additional well at that site. DEP estimates the fees would provide $2.4 million annually. That would allow the agency to erase a $311,641 deficit in its oil and gas office while providing the $1.3 million needed to hire 14 more well inspectors and office support staff, Secretary Randy Huffman told the lawmakers.