Northeast Pennsylvania counties and municipalities used impact fee money paid by the state's natural gas drilling industry to fund road and stormwater repairs, reduce taxes and improve public safety, according to accounting reports released Friday.
The local governments were required to submit by April 15 a record of how they spent their share of the $204 million collected from companies for wells drilled through 2011. Counties and towns that host wells split about half of the impact fee money, with the rest dedicated to state or local programs.
The law imposing the impact fee, known as Act 13, allowed local governments to spend the money for about a dozen purposes including roads, public safety, environmental conservation, tax reduction, social services and housing support.
Most of the governments that received impact fee funds in Lackawanna, Wyoming and Susquehanna counties saved the money for later use, according to the reports posted online by the Public Utility Commission.
Wyoming County put its $856,000 into a reserve fund, while Susquehanna County put $1.3 million of its $3.9 million allocation into reserve, according to the reports. The rest of Susquehanna County's funds were dedicated to public safety, tax reductions, judicial services, records management and environmental programs.
Wyoming County Commissioner Thomas Henry said the county also dedicated some impact fee funds to housing and stream bank restoration.
"There is a lot of impact but we've been careful and tried not to use the bulk of the money until we need to," he said.
If local governments did not save their impact fee payments, they generally dedicated it to road, stormwater and sewer projects or emergency services.
Springville Twp., a hub of drilling activity in Susquehanna County, split its $500,000 between roads and public safety, according to the report.
Supervisor Duane Wood said the payment "helped us drastically."
The township replaced a road grader that had been built in 1957 and helped the volunteer fire company buy a new tanker. The rest was spent on road repair.
"Any time you get free money it's always a blessing," he said.
Benton Twp. received the largest payment in Lackawanna County - $9,800 - and also dedicated the funds to roads.
For a rural community with a small budget, the money was "definitely significant," Supervisor Larry Seymour said. But he was uncertain if the payment offset the cost to the township of the conditional approval process for Benton's one exploratory well and the petroleum engineer the township hired to observe the drilling.
Although he likes that communities are receiving funds to compensate them for their costs, Mr. Seymour said he would prefer that the money be spent on environmental oversight.
"To me the real need is to not have problems occur in the first place," he said.
Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com