Never one to pass up a good redneck joke, The New York Times last week happily heaped scorn on the scraped-knuckle roughnecks who make a (good) living extracting energy from Pennsylvania shale rock — and their less-well-off upstate New York neighbors.
To wit:
HORSEHEADS, N.Y. — At the Glamour and Glow boutique in the local mall here, crystal necklaces and fake fur vests have been hot-ticket items the last year.
When the drilling workers head home between long stretches of work in this gas-rich region, explained Christy Spreng, the [Chemung County] shop’s owner, they need gifts for their wives and girlfriends. “They know what they want,” she said. “They’ll say: ‘Looks good. Wrap it up.’ ”
Would the Times ever so condescend to folks who cash government checks for a living? Of course not.
But never mind.
Those who read beyond the initial ridicule found a story that — however inadvertently — underscored the indisputable fact that natural-gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing will be a financial boon to the economically ravaged Southern Tier.
In fact, it already is — albeit indirectly.
Local Chemung County businesses are reporting surging sales. Hotels are booked solid for months at a time. The county airport is adding flights and looking to build a new runway.
And that’s without any fracking.
All the action is on the Pennsylvania side of the border, where fracking — the process by which natural gas is extracted by blasting rock with high-pressure water and chemicals — is both legal and flourishing.
And it turns out that even tiny Chemung — whose biggest city is Elmira — is a metropolis compared to sleepy Pennsylvania. So the neighboring gas workers come to Chemung to spend money.
“Places are jammed,” crowed an obviously thrilled County Executive Thomas Santulli.
At least half of Chemung’s tax-revenue growth is directly attributable to fracking in Pennsylvania.
Some two dozen companies — providing more than 1,000 jobs — have leased or bought more than a million square feet of commercial space in anticipation of future drilling in the high-gas region.
Again, that’s without any fracking under way in New York. Just think how Chemung’s success could be replicated across the Southern Tier.
But fracking’s future here remains uncertain at best: The green lobby, backed by allies within the state Department of Environmental Conservation, will be damned if it’ll allow such a thing in New York.
Gov. Cuomo appears favorably disposed toward fracking — at the very least, he’s not openly opposed to it — and the results of an environmental study of the practice that he ordered are expected soon.
But, again, opponents are throwing up one roadblock after another, apparently hoping to inflict death by a thousand cuts.
Yet New York remains in desperate need of the economic shot in the arm that fracking would provide.
And it needs the energy, too.
As one gas worker told the Times: “[Opponents] want to know why we’re up here drilling. I say, because you like to heat your home.”
Time to end the delays and speed up the approval process — now.
And that’s no joke.