Chesapeake Energy Invested $92 Million in Pa. Roads Last Year
2 March 2011
Chesapeake Energy spent more than $92 million last year to maintain and
improve roads in northeastern Pennsylvania where its rigs and trucks
travel as the company extracts natural gas from Marcellus Shale.
The Oklahoma-based energy company said it has repaired and upgraded
about 300 miles of roads on 40 state routes and 80 township roads
throughout Bradford, Wyoming, Sullivan and Susquehanna counties.
Chesapeake works with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and
local road supervisors to identify roads that need repairs or upgrading
to handle the heavy truck traffic associated with drilling.
In Bradford County, about 100 miles of roads have been repaired by
Chesapeake, said Michael McWilliams, spokesman for PennDOT's road
maintenance in Towanda.
The majority of the work involved full-depth reclamation work in which
equipment removes and grinds the original road surface material, mixes
it with concrete and reapplies the material on the roadway.
Other roads in the county, repaired at Chesapeake's expense, were
resurfaced or had the original pavement removed before a new road
surface was put down, McWilliams said.
As a result of the increased use of the county's road by heavy truck
traffic associated with the natural gas industry, PennDot has posted
10-ton weight limits on many of the county's smaller road.
"We did very little road postings prior to the gas drilling," he said.
He added that Chesapeake has signed excess maintenance agreements with
PennDOT that requires the company to patch roads where it's been
determined its trucks caused the damage.
"We've also talked to them about the road projects planned for this
year," he said. "We don't have a list yet, but we will have it in the
near future."