Marian’s Pizza Shack sits 10 miles north of the Pennsylvania line, an invisible boundary that separates this small business from economic opportunity.
After 23 years in business, owner Marian Szarejko has decided to sell her pizza shack.
“There are no jobs here,” Szarejko said. “Business has gone down so much that I am dipping into my savings just to keep this afloat.”
Szarejko’s decision echoes a common theme that has plagued the southern tier of upstate New York for years—a lack of economic development.
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“If I owned a place in Pennsylvania, I wouldn’t be thinking of closing. I would be thinking about expanding,” Szarejko said. “The difference is they did fracking.”
The issue of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracking, has emerged as a contentious national debate. Communities and states are deciding whether to embrace or ban the new form of natural gas extraction.
But nowhere is the issue as real as it is for upstate New Yorkers who see the prosperity of neighboring communities in Pennsylvania.
New York and Pennsylvania are two of five states that sit above the nation’s largest natural gas field, the Marcellus Shale.
New York bans fracking. Pennsylvania allows it.
The Daily Signal traveled to the two states’ border to talk to residents about which policy has improved lives.
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