Penn State and others have been writing reports and issuing fact sheets over the last two years suggesting the economic impact of Marcellus Shale was somehow in doubt, or that some folks might have been left out. They were wrong and the proof is in the tax bill – going down.

Natural gas opponents have been claiming and their leaders have been saying, over and over again, to anyone who will listen, that the economic benefits are illusory, intangible, short-lived, boom-and-bust or otherwise insignificant.

They have repeatedly suggested the taxes fail to compensate for other costs and only the large, and somehow “greedy,” landowners benefit while the rest of the community pays. They have employed shallow, biased and subjective studies from sources who know better to paint a picture of gloom and doom or, at least uncertainty with respect to natural gas economic impacts.

Now along comes a newspaper story of an event destroying, in one fell swoop, every one of those false suppositions.

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/bradford-tax-bill-is-the-mi...