It was the best of booms, it was the worst of bans.
Separated by a single state line, two rural communities straddling the New York-Pennsylvania border have been thrust into opposite futures — one riding a lucrative fracking boom, its Empire State neighbor facing economic rot due to a wall of environmental regulations.
“The people in Bradford County know we’re helping to power America,” Doug McLinko, an elected commissioner in Bradford County, Pennsylvania. told The Post of the way fracking has transformed the area.
“We’re stringing our own rural broadband, rather than wait for the state or federal government to do it. We built a brand new state-of-the-art, $20 million 911 center, a new Sheriff’s center, new veterans center and a $4 million historically accurate copper roof on our courthouse,” McLinko bragged.
“It’s incredible, what it’s meant to our schools, working families, retired people, you name it.”
Driving around the town of Towanda in this relatively forgotten part of the Keystone State, The Post observed a standard of living largely absent in most far-flung rural counties across the nation — old houses with sparkling new paint jobs, new barns, roofs and cars.
It’s a level of prosperity residents of neighboring Chemung County, New York, are completely shut off from, despite sharing the same natural resources, all thanks to New York’s environmental regulations.
Thirty miles away, Elmira — once a bustling manufacturing powerhouse — has been gutted by free trade agreements like NAFTA in the ’90s and factories fleeing burdensome taxes and regulations, according to Federal Reserve data and wide academic consensus.
Today the town is mostly known for being home to a notorious maximum security prison and as the final resting place of American literary master Mark Twain.
The area was perfectly summed up by Republican governor challenger Bruce Blakeman during an Oct. 13 gubernatorial debate where he blasted New York’s fracking ban, telling Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, “In Pennsylvania, they’re getting jobs . . . They’re driving brand-new Cadillac Escalades.
“On the New York side of the border, they’re driving around 25-year-old rusted-out pickup trucks — because of your policies.”
The Post observed blocks of abandoned storefronts in the small city’s historic downtown, amid discount stores and general disrepair. Statistics lay bare the gulf between the two towns.
Towanda has a median household income of $61,000 while Elmira is $43,000, according to the US Census Bureau.
The poverty rates are 13% in Bradford County versus 30% in Chemung.
FBI data reveals Towanda’s violent crime rate at roughly 60% below the national rate while Elmira’s is a shocking 52% above the national average, with property crime there more than double the national rate.
The trend also bleeds into high school graduation rates, which are 15 points higher in the Pennsylvania county, and overdose deaths, which were a tragic 80% above the national average in Chemung County in 2024, according to health department data. Bradford County is in line with national rates.
Both counties sit atop the Marcellus Shale — a vast natural gas reserve spanning several eastern states and the largest natural gas production field in the US, containing hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas.
It is accessible through hydraulic fracking, which works by injecting high-pressure water, sand and chemicals underground to crack open rock and release the trapped gas.
Before the fracking ban, business had been booming in Chemung County.
“Our mall was packed with people, our sales taxes were through the roof. It was terrific. The influx of people from Texas and Louisiana. You couldn’t get a hotel room. The airplanes were coming and going,” former Chemung County executive Tom Santulli recalled to The Post.
“We would have reshaped the Southern Tier. I really thought it was going to happen. Even the [New York State Department of Environmental Conservation] was on our side. But New York is a very liberal state and they were very much opposed to it,” he said.
In 2014, citing environmental concerns over the toxic byproduct and risks to groundwater contamination, New York banned fracking under then-Governor Andrew Cuomo.
“It was like a pin in a balloon that Monday morning when I got the phone call,” Santulli said.
Ironically, Pennsylvania still shipped its fracking waste to New York for processing after the ban. Chemung County alone took in over 80,000 tons a year, an analysis by The Post reveals, until a loophole was closed in 2020.
Bradford County now treats its fracking sludge locally. McLinko said they’ve had no issues with groundwater contamination and the gas companies have put hundreds of millions of dollars into improving the roads. Until last year, he said, the county had not raised taxes in over 20 years.
Local data shows Bradford County boasts around 1,500 active wells; 1,200 miles of gathering lines used to collect the untreated gas, around 60 compressor stations and 100 freshwater taps — infrastructure completely absent just across the state line.
While royalty rates vary widely according to several factors, Pennsylvania has mandated a minimum 12.5% payout to landowners.
That means residents with a well on their property are collecting between a couple of hundred and several thousand dollars a month.
According to Pennsylvania state data, Bradford County gets around $3.9 million annually direct from gas companies and over $6.9 million to local municipalities, all separate from private landowner royalties.
McLinko gets regular royalty checks from for a slice of land he owns, saying, “It changed my life. I don’t have a lot of land, but it’s been amazing.”
In New York Hochul has maintained her opposition, saying in 2024, “We’re not fracking, we’re not burning coal. We’re not going backwards.”
She has instead made controversial solar and wind farms an energy priority — which have stirred near unanimous backlash from rural New Yorkers living near the intrusive green energy sprawl.
Meanwhile Pennsylvanians like McLinko can only shake their heads when they peer over the state line.
“It’s been huge in our county. For these clowns up there to ban it is as irresponsible as it gets,” he said. “You’re freaking nuts. Clinically insane.”