New Yorks fracking ban leaves community to crumble while Penn. neighbors boom with gas millions

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, tellin...