Episode 33: State forest drilling and the gas cash impasse

This week's guest: Marie Cusick of StateImpact Pennsylvania

• Katie Meyer
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Katie Meyer was WITF’s Capitol Bureau Chief from 2016-2020. While at WITF, she covered all things state politics for public radio stations throughout Pennsylvania. Katie came to Harrisburg by way of New York City, where she worked at Fordham University’s public radio station, WFUV, as an anchor, general assignment reporter, and co-host of an original podcast. A 2016 graduate of Fordham, she earned several awards for her work at WFUV, including four 2016 Gracies.
  
  Katie is a native New Yorker, though she originally hails from Troy, a little farther up the Hudson River. She can attest that the bagels are still pretty good there.
  
  WITF's Capitol Bureau Chief Desk is partially funded through generous gifts made in the memory of Tony May through the Anthony J. May Memorial Fund.
  
  For more information about Tony May, click here.

DCNR forester Ben Gamble, left, and Kelly Sitch, an ecologist for the agency, on a pipeline right-of-way in the Tiadaghton State Forest. Photo: Reid R. Frazier

For months now, Democratic Governor Tom Wolf has been battling Republican lawmakers over how Pennsylvania should fund infrastructure improvements.

Wolf wants to implement a $4.5 billion plan funded by a tax on natural gas drillers. Republicans have adamantly opposed such a tax for years, and are casting Wolf’s plan as a nonstarter.

Now, two GOP senators are introducing an alternative: a $1 billion package funded by lifting Wolf’s four-year moratorium on drilling in state forests.

StateImpact Pennsylvania reporter Marie Cusick joins us for a discussion about the history of forest drilling, the politics behind it, and the reason why it still has an environmental impact even if most of the work happens far underground.