第165页 20 | Policing the State

Despite the unprecedented profits associated with fracking, Pennsylvania charged oil and gas operators next to nothing in taxes or fees for the right to drill. As part of the new give-and-take under Act 13, industry would pay an impact fee to local governments, a flat fee per well. In exchange, companies would be able to bypass old arrangements that required approval from small municipalities. If a driller wanted to dig a frack pond next to a school, say, or in a church parking lot, under the new law, the town would have no right to say no, as long as the pond was at least three hundred feet away. In practical terms, if the new law went into effect, a frack pond could sit five times closer to someone’s house than the one uphill from Stacey.
John Smith’s concerns about the new law went beyond health and environmental issues. It could spell financial ruin for the small communities he’d been helping to protect by drafting local ordinances. This new law would negate every one of them, and if a town decided to challenge the industry by taking a company to court and lost, the town would have to pay the company’s legal fees. As a solicitor, Smith knew what that meant. His client Robinson Township, for instance, had an annual operating budget of four hundred thousand dollars. If Robinson tried to challenge an oil and gas company that hired corporate lawyers billing at four hundred or five hundred dollars an hour, then a ten-day trial could easily bankrupt the small town.