AP: More Factors Than Shale Behind Butler County Boom

• 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.

Yesterday, we wrote about Washington and Butler Counties leading the nation in job growth.
We credited the boom to the Marcellus Shale drilling industry, which is active in both counties.
Today, the AP adds a bit more context. Natural gas extraction was the main driver in Washington County’s growth, the article reports, but in Butler County, another factor was at work, too. “Joel MacKay of the Butler County Planning Commission says there’s some Marcellus activity there, but he attributes most of the growth to a move there by Westinghouse Co.”

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