Lancaster County Banking On Impact Fee Revenue

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.

June 29, 2012 | 1:36 PM

Tim Lambert / WITF-FM

A Lycoming County drilling rigFM

Want proof Pennsylvania’s new drilling impact fee will send revenue across the commonwealth? Lancaster County, which is about as far away from the Marcellus Shale formation as you can get, expects to take in more than $2 million:

Just because there are no deep-drilled natural gas wells in Lancaster County doesn’t mean the county won’t share in the newly established Marcellus Shale impact fees.
One estimate floated by the Lancaster County Planning Commission indicates a first installment could send $2.2 million into county coffers.
The money would have to be used for bridges and parks and preservation of natural lands.
The county commissioners were briefed on the revenue-sharing from Marcellus Shale by county planners in April, the same month Act 13 went into effect.