Press-Enterprise
ROSES AND THORNS
Published: September 16, 2023
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ROSE: The story of how and why a new, billion-dollar generating plant was built near Berwick is a good one, and we’re glad officials were not bashful about telling it during a recent tour.
The Caithness Moxie Freedom Generating Station can provide electricity for up to 900,000 homes. This is energy Americans need and want.
But the station would not exist if common sense had not prevailed in the years-long debate over fracking to extract natural gas from the Marcellus Shale.
During the first two decades of the century, environmental extremists ginned up all kinds of Chicken Little warnings about how the fracking industry would destroy Pennsylvania. History has proven them wrong, but at the time they had powerful allies in Harrisburg and the media.
The guy who stood up to them was the understated, unloved and largely forgotten Tom Corbett. During his one term as governor, 2011-2014, he steadfastly opposed tax and regulatory schemes aimed at hobbling natural gas exploration and development. Democrats accused him of being in the pocket of oil and gas interests, which donated a million dollars to his campaign. “Had they not given me a dime, I would still be in this position,” he replied. “We need to grow jobs in Pennsylvania.” And we did, along with fortifying the resilience of our energy supply.
Our neighbors in New York were not so fortunate. Their governor, the now-disgraced Andrew Cuomo, basked in the adulation of celebrities and progressives who smeared fracking with the same lies Corbett refused to entertain. Fracking remains permanently banned in the Empire State.