WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — This small town, once left for dead, may be the biggest boomtown the Northeast has seen in over a century.
Williamsport, best known as the home of Little League Baseball, is now the seventh-fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data released this year. Thanks to fracking, it is suddenly flush, brought back to life by a natural gas boom as energy companies and roughnecks hunt for profits under the nearby Appalachian hills.
“If you have a driver’s license and a clean background check, you can get a job,” Shariel Campbell, 39, told a reporter from behind the bar at Rumrunners, a tropical-themed Williamsport pub where oil workers clad in work boots and jackets emblazoned with “Halliburton” and “Anadarko” spend rare hours off downing $2 well drinks.
Fracking, a controversial method of drilling, has opened up hundreds of miles of once impenetrable shale formation to the powerful gas industry, flooding small towns that haven’t seen good times since the lumber boom of the 1800s with oil royalties and pitting neighbors against each other over the environmental costs of the practice.
But in Williamsport, a city of about 30,000 people, visitors are less likely to see an anti-fracking sign than something even more unusual in this far-flung part of the country, tucked away in the Pennsylvania mountains: The trappings of prosperity. That, and a lot of single men, young guys lured away from small towns in Louisiana and Texas by entry-level jobs that can pay more than $100,000 a year.
Williamsport, once lined with empty storefronts, is filled with land leasing companies and high-end restaurants, its roads clogged with the oversized white pickup trucks favored by drillers and those who want to be like them.
Business at Van Campen Motors is up 77 percent from last year, as gas workers hunt for brand-new SUVs. “They’re coming in with cash,” Josh Van Campen told The Daily. “We had a median income of $28,000 before the gas hit. Now there are 19-, 20-, 22-year-old kids making $150K, and coming in for brand-new Rams and Cherokees and Wranglers.”
Gun sales aren’t hurting, either. “Business is good, real good. We got these guys from the gas wells who come up here and they like guns, especially the assault-type weapons, paramilitary stuff,” says Frank Lowe, the owner of the All American Gun Shop, a business he runs out of his home in the winding hills above Williamsport.
Back in town, hotels are booked solid, as gas companies put up roughnecks for weeks or even months at a time.
More than 100 years after the last boom, when lumber companies built rows of Victorian mansions for the industry’s tycoons and stripped the surrounding forests of timber, Williamsport finds itself again transformed. The actual gas wells, drilled in the sloping mountains outside town, are hidden from view. But their footprints are everywhere, and to many longtime residents, the area is dramatically changed, if not unrecognizable.
“My neighbors sold their gas rights, so there’s a pipeline going in right through my backyard,” says Campbell, who works as a bartender at Rumrunners. “And it’s in the middle of a shooting range, too, for the local hunting club. So I hope that steel is thick.” Residents of Lycoming County, which counts Williamsport as its largest town, say many of those who sold their land rights to gas companies have seen dollar amounts they had never dreamed of before the boom. “These farmers with their milk and cows, they’re multimillionaires all of a sudden,” says Lowe.
The work isn’t for everyone. The hours can be brutal, for example, with men — and some women — working 14-day shifts, sometimes 120 hours a week. Dave Gilmore, 27, worked for Frac Tech last year but quit to spend more time with his fiancee.
“The night I quit, I’d been working for 22 hours straight,” said Gilmore, who has since married and found work as a mechanic. “We were making about $100,000 a year but we were working around the clock.”
Lycoming County Sheriff Mark Lusk says the long hours mean that when roughnecks aren’t out on the rigs, they hit the bar hard. “These guys are working 20-hour days. And well, hell — they’re gonna raise hell when they’re off,” he said. “It’s almost like the modern day version of the gold rush.”
The rush of roughnecks has flooded bars and restaurants with cash and introduced a little friendly competition into the city’s dating scene.
“Some of the guys from Texas or wherever will get drunk and start hitting on the girls from town and that’s how fights start,” Joel Lemon, a 19-year-old oil pipe worker from Victoria, Texas, told The Daily. The local guys, it seems, have a word for this phenomenon. “They call them gasholes,” said Shariel Campbell, the bartender at Rumrunners. “But they’re just jealous.”
Police chiefs in the county say they aren’t sure yet if the boom is fueling an increase in prostitution, although there have been rumors. Murray said gas workers routinely ask him to recommend a good strip club. “They always ask. They’re like, ‘Is there a strip club out here?’” said Murray. “If you wanted to make some money in Williamsport, open up a strip joint. It would be packed.”
The gas industry first came to Williamsport in 2008, and in this remote region of northeast Pennsylvania, where entire generations have had little job opportunity to speak of, it is being welcomed with open arms.
“I embrace it because it means good paying jobs,” Williamsport Mayor Gabriel Campana told The Daily in an interview last month. “It has put Williamsport once again on the map.”
That the gas boom has brought jobs to the region is undeniable. A study compiled by Penn State University and Penn College, in Williamsport, found that more than 23,000 jobs were directly created by the gas companies in the counties that experienced the drilling in 2009 alone, a figure that doesn’t include the thousands more jobs the boom generated in other local industries, like construction and hotels.
Just how much of the windfall stays local remains unclear. Between 25 and 37 percent of those jobs were filled by non-Pennsylvanians, for example. And the boom has created its share of challenges. Rents in Williamsport have doubled and even tripled, pushing out poor and elderly residents who can’t afford the higher rates paid by gas workers.
In a twist, the housing shortage has caused problems at the county jail, too. “The prisons are full, too full, because I can’t release a prisoner unless he has an address, and the poorest people have nowhere to go,” Sheriff Lusk told The Daily.
The mayor brushed aside murmurs of a crisis. “A lot of the media has said things about homeless issues. We do not have such a thing. This isn’t like New York City or other areas where you see people sleeping on benches.”
Then there are the effects of the drilling beyond the dollar signs. “Everybody’s making money, but money isn’t everything,” says Lowe. “We got our kids and grandkids to think about, too. Peoples’ wells are getting contaminated with methane and other types of chemicals. I think that in the long run we’re going to be sorry.”
The gas companies say the risk of contamination is extremely low, and note that the Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t declared the water in the county unsafe to drink. Mary Wolf, a government relations advisor at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation in Williamsport, said the company is committed to protecting the environment. “We care about how things are done and we’re doing it right.”
But concerns have intensified in recent weeks after an EPA study found chemicals used for fracking in the ground water of a Wyoming town. In Dimock, Pa., two hours to the northeast, state regulators say a gas company drilled wells that allowed methane to leak into the town’s aquifer.
Gayle Peters-Coates, 60, said the influx of money makes it tempting to ignore the risks. “They don’t want to hear about what could happen,” Peters-Coates, who grew up in Williamsport and now lives in nearby Cogan Station, said of her neighbors. “They don’t want to hear about the town of Dimock above us, where they can’t drink the water.”
Before Mary Wolf became the public face of Anadarko in 2008, she served as Williamsport’s mayor. Wolf says the move made sense. “They needed someone with local ties,” she said. “I have commitment to the community so it was a natural fit.”
Mayor Campana said Williamsport is losing good public officials to the gas companies, since the pay is somewhat better. When asked if Wolf was one of them, Campana chuckled. “She seems really happy. I’m happy for her.”
Mara.Gay@thedaily.com
Williamsport, best known as the home of Little League Baseball, is now the seventh-fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data released this year. Thanks to fracking, it is suddenly flush, brought back to life by a natural gas boom as energy companies and roughnecks hunt for profits under the nearby Appalachian hills.
“If you have a driver’s license and a clean background check, you can get a job,” Shariel Campbell, 39, told a reporter from behind the bar at Rumrunners, a tropical-themed Williamsport pub where oil workers clad in work boots and jackets emblazoned with “Halliburton” and “Anadarko” spend rare hours off downing $2 well drinks.
Fracking, a controversial method of drilling, has opened up hundreds of miles of once impenetrable shale formation to the powerful gas industry, flooding small towns that haven’t seen good times since the lumber boom of the 1800s with oil royalties and pitting neighbors against each other over the environmental costs of the practice.
But in Williamsport, a city of about 30,000 people, visitors are less likely to see an anti-fracking sign than something even more unusual in this far-flung part of the country, tucked away in the Pennsylvania mountains: The trappings of prosperity. That, and a lot of single men, young guys lured away from small towns in Louisiana and Texas by entry-level jobs that can pay more than $100,000 a year.
Williamsport, once lined with empty storefronts, is filled with land leasing companies and high-end restaurants, its roads clogged with the oversized white pickup trucks favored by drillers and those who want to be like them.
Business at Van Campen Motors is up 77 percent from last year, as gas workers hunt for brand-new SUVs. “They’re coming in with cash,” Josh Van Campen told The Daily. “We had a median income of $28,000 before the gas hit. Now there are 19-, 20-, 22-year-old kids making $150K, and coming in for brand-new Rams and Cherokees and Wranglers.”
Gun sales aren’t hurting, either. “Business is good, real good. We got these guys from the gas wells who come up here and they like guns, especially the assault-type weapons, paramilitary stuff,” says Frank Lowe, the owner of the All American Gun Shop, a business he runs out of his home in the winding hills above Williamsport.
Back in town, hotels are booked solid, as gas companies put up roughnecks for weeks or even months at a time.
More than 100 years after the last boom, when lumber companies built rows of Victorian mansions for the industry’s tycoons and stripped the surrounding forests of timber, Williamsport finds itself again transformed. The actual gas wells, drilled in the sloping mountains outside town, are hidden from view. But their footprints are everywhere, and to many longtime residents, the area is dramatically changed, if not unrecognizable.
“My neighbors sold their gas rights, so there’s a pipeline going in right through my backyard,” says Campbell, who works as a bartender at Rumrunners. “And it’s in the middle of a shooting range, too, for the local hunting club. So I hope that steel is thick.” Residents of Lycoming County, which counts Williamsport as its largest town, say many of those who sold their land rights to gas companies have seen dollar amounts they had never dreamed of before the boom. “These farmers with their milk and cows, they’re multimillionaires all of a sudden,” says Lowe.
The work isn’t for everyone. The hours can be brutal, for example, with men — and some women — working 14-day shifts, sometimes 120 hours a week. Dave Gilmore, 27, worked for Frac Tech last year but quit to spend more time with his fiancee.
“The night I quit, I’d been working for 22 hours straight,” said Gilmore, who has since married and found work as a mechanic. “We were making about $100,000 a year but we were working around the clock.”
Lycoming County Sheriff Mark Lusk says the long hours mean that when roughnecks aren’t out on the rigs, they hit the bar hard. “These guys are working 20-hour days. And well, hell — they’re gonna raise hell when they’re off,” he said. “It’s almost like the modern day version of the gold rush.”
The rush of roughnecks has flooded bars and restaurants with cash and introduced a little friendly competition into the city’s dating scene.
“Some of the guys from Texas or wherever will get drunk and start hitting on the girls from town and that’s how fights start,” Joel Lemon, a 19-year-old oil pipe worker from Victoria, Texas, told The Daily. The local guys, it seems, have a word for this phenomenon. “They call them gasholes,” said Shariel Campbell, the bartender at Rumrunners. “But they’re just jealous.”
Police chiefs in the county say they aren’t sure yet if the boom is fueling an increase in prostitution, although there have been rumors. Murray said gas workers routinely ask him to recommend a good strip club. “They always ask. They’re like, ‘Is there a strip club out here?’” said Murray. “If you wanted to make some money in Williamsport, open up a strip joint. It would be packed.”
The gas industry first came to Williamsport in 2008, and in this remote region of northeast Pennsylvania, where entire generations have had little job opportunity to speak of, it is being welcomed with open arms.
“I embrace it because it means good paying jobs,” Williamsport Mayor Gabriel Campana told The Daily in an interview last month. “It has put Williamsport once again on the map.”
That the gas boom has brought jobs to the region is undeniable. A study compiled by Penn State University and Penn College, in Williamsport, found that more than 23,000 jobs were directly created by the gas companies in the counties that experienced the drilling in 2009 alone, a figure that doesn’t include the thousands more jobs the boom generated in other local industries, like construction and hotels.
Just how much of the windfall stays local remains unclear. Between 25 and 37 percent of those jobs were filled by non-Pennsylvanians, for example. And the boom has created its share of challenges. Rents in Williamsport have doubled and even tripled, pushing out poor and elderly residents who can’t afford the higher rates paid by gas workers.
In a twist, the housing shortage has caused problems at the county jail, too. “The prisons are full, too full, because I can’t release a prisoner unless he has an address, and the poorest people have nowhere to go,” Sheriff Lusk told The Daily.
The mayor brushed aside murmurs of a crisis. “A lot of the media has said things about homeless issues. We do not have such a thing. This isn’t like New York City or other areas where you see people sleeping on benches.”
Then there are the effects of the drilling beyond the dollar signs. “Everybody’s making money, but money isn’t everything,” says Lowe. “We got our kids and grandkids to think about, too. Peoples’ wells are getting contaminated with methane and other types of chemicals. I think that in the long run we’re going to be sorry.”
The gas companies say the risk of contamination is extremely low, and note that the Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t declared the water in the county unsafe to drink. Mary Wolf, a government relations advisor at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation in Williamsport, said the company is committed to protecting the environment. “We care about how things are done and we’re doing it right.”
But concerns have intensified in recent weeks after an EPA study found chemicals used for fracking in the ground water of a Wyoming town. In Dimock, Pa., two hours to the northeast, state regulators say a gas company drilled wells that allowed methane to leak into the town’s aquifer.
Gayle Peters-Coates, 60, said the influx of money makes it tempting to ignore the risks. “They don’t want to hear about what could happen,” Peters-Coates, who grew up in Williamsport and now lives in nearby Cogan Station, said of her neighbors. “They don’t want to hear about the town of Dimock above us, where they can’t drink the water.”
Before Mary Wolf became the public face of Anadarko in 2008, she served as Williamsport’s mayor. Wolf says the move made sense. “They needed someone with local ties,” she said. “I have commitment to the community so it was a natural fit.”
Mayor Campana said Williamsport is losing good public officials to the gas companies, since the pay is somewhat better. When asked if Wolf was one of them, Campana chuckled. “She seems really happy. I’m happy for her.”
Mara.Gay@thedaily.com
