BoomTown: How Drilling Has Changed Towanda, PA

INFOGRAPHIC

December 10, 2012 | 1:00 AM

By Scott Detrow

Becky Lettenberger / NPR

Trucks drive down Towanda's main drag. Click on the image to view StateImpact Pennsylvania's new multimedia project, called "Boomtown."

StateImpact Pennsylvania’s latest project, BoomTown, documents how natural gas drilling has affected Towanda, Bradford County. Click here to watch and listen to the report.

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What does a drilling boom look like?

In Towanda, Bradford County, it looks like trucks rumbling across Veterans Memorial Bridge and down Main Street. The vehicles, hauling water, chemicals, equipment, sand and dirt more to and from natural gas drilling sites, have been a steady presence since 2008, when hydraulic fracturing began in surrounding Bradford County.

“The traffic here is horrendous,” says Joe Benjamin, a recent college graduate who lives in Towanda. But the increased flow also means more revenue for Towanda’s businesses. “That’s why we never complained about the traffic,” notes Karen Parkhurst, who operates a Towanda eatery called the Weigh Station. “When there’s traffic there’s people coming into your restaurant.”

Click on the above image to view StateImpact Pennsylvania's new multimedia project, "Boomtown."

Benjamin and Parkhurst are two of the dozens of people StateImpact Pennsylvania interviewed for a new multimedia project called “BoomTown.” Our goal was to document how natural gas drilling has changed life in a Pennsylvania town. We picked Towanda because it’s the seat of Bradford County, which has seen more Marcellus Shale wells drilled than any other Pennsylvania county. Towanda was one of the first communities to experience natural gas drilling here.

Towanda is also one of the first places in Pennsylvania to experience the downside of the drilling boom. The rate of drilling has slowed down significantly in Bradford County, as natural gas prices have fallen. That translates to less revenue for the Weigh Station and other Towanda businesses who saw increased profits in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Click here to learn more about how the drilling boom has impacted life in Towanda.

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http://www.facebook.com/savedbyhisgracej316 Pa Miller

http://www.raptureready.com/abc/Roman_Empire.html
NoFrackingWay101

Too bad you didn’t ask the Weigh Station about their gas leases. Also–that’s not the main restaurant the town residents use. (And the weigh station is not on the main drag–soo—of course they would not need to complain much about traffic. Did you ask them about the family nursery RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE THE FRACK CHEMICALS are loaded? How the railyard’s chemicals flooded into that building? Guess the reconstruction reduced the kid’s toxic loads. Also–why no visit to the main restaurants the frackers USED while it was happening. YOU MISSED COVERING THIS WHEN IT HAPPENED, NPR. No mention of the aftermath of the timber and coal ‘booms’ (black lung disease). This was not good coverage.
Kaye Kiker

Who would want to live in a community like this?? Property values must have gone south. The noise and pollution is bad enough, but quality of life and clean water is at stake in this community.
http://www.facebook.com/medijohn7 John Striley

Diesel exhaust is produced when an engine burns diesel fuel. It is a complex mixture of thousands of gases and fine particles (commonly known as soot) that contains more than 40 toxic air contaminants. These include many known or suspected cancer-causing substances, such as benzene, arsenic and formaldehyde. It also contains other harmful pollutants, including nitrogen oxides You good folks are looking at 1 small aspect of industrial drilling pollution?

http://www.facebook.com/medijohn7 John Striley

Live near a silica distribution site and your lungs are double dammed!

DISAPPOINTED…AGAIN

I was in Towanda just two weeks ago, to visit my daughter, who is working on the pipeline and saw nothing but normal life for a small town. She raised in a farming community in the south, where we have constant exposure to insecticides, pesticides, spent diesel and the much more. Mr. Striley, this is life and those people in Towanda need development and growth. That town/area is many years behind. And as far as the property prices going south, you would never imagine what the property owners have put together for rental property. I have seen outdoor storage buildings that offered more than what some of the Towanda/Bradford County rental property has to offer…especially at the rate! These workers are getting robbed and kissing the robber at the same time. They get paid, pay the rent, buy food, gas, clothing and entertainment from the very people that have already robbed them for a shanty shack to live in. Thank God, my daughter’s time there is almost over! Towanda is not a friendly place…I have been…seen…experienced…I know!

Towanda Born and Raised

Feel free to never come back

Towanda Grad 1978

A town full of ignorant Towanda Pools….inbreds from the time of Marie Antoinette. Jacking up prices for the drillers? How about displacing residents who already lived in the confines of that podunk town? Let’s triple the rents…..and if you can’t pay, well then too bad for you. I imagine all the positive speakers on here are the idiots who had wells put in. Wait until cancer riddles your body or the water can be set to flame right out of the faucets. You deserve what you get.

Jprovi218

You know…it’s the same arguement with PA. people that I’ve heard ever since I was growing up there. It’s a constant battle between the “haves & the have not’s” Everyone was in the same boat in these towns until gas was drilled. Those who have gas on their land are paid for it. Those who dont have gas just bitch and hold out their hands asking for their share. The roads are bad, there is traffic, spills, rude out of towners, Why does the truck have to go down my street/road. What a bunch of pussies! The people who raped the workers with high rent and crappy service will smile and go to the bank until it dries up and then they will get on the same wagon as the rest of the bitchy people.
Arrrggghhh! I am only 53 years old..but I sure thought the people of PA would have adapted and changed their ways after the steel mills closed…I guess not! I’m sure once the Steeler’s lost their bid for the playoffs..several of you burned your shirts and became Raven’s fans….lol
Stacey Griffith

This is so sad to me, I have been going to Towanda for most of my childhood and My mother has chosen to retire there because of it’s small town appeal and beauty. It has always been a place I’d escape the hussle and bussle of city life. It isn’t that they are so far behind the times but maybe that they just chose to keep a certain, more simplistic way of living. Now it is traffic ridden, crowded and everyday staples are over priced. Summer days spend jumping off the rope swing into the creek along Airport road just isn’t the same with the big rigs rumbling over the recently expanded bridge. This summer while visiting I noticed the coyote have seemed to be forced closer to residential areas as well. As far as t not being a friendly place, it had always been, but as its been proven time and time again, money changes things.

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