The Land That Fracking Forgot

Four years ago, as the economy was entering a devastating recession, swaths of rural Pennsylvania were booming. Energy companies were using hydraulic fracturing, better known as fracking, to tap the vast natural gas reserves of the Marcellus Shale underlying much of the Keystone State. In Wayne County, these corporations offered struggling farmers lucrative leases for mineral rights. “Land here became a whole different asset class,” says Tim Meagher, a real estate broker whose family settled in the area in the 1840s.

Today there is no drilling in Wayne County. The Delaware River Basin Commission, a regional regulatory agency, has declared a moratorium while it studies the environmental impact. Gas companies have invoked force majeure clauses to put their contracts with property owners on hold. Investors who bought farmland are stuck, and farmers who expected to retire on gas royalties are back to eking out a living from agriculture. Meanwhile, fracking opponents are brandishing the example of Wayne County as they fight shale energy exploration across the country.