August in Potter County is fair and festival month. I often grumble about this, as multiple events are scheduled for the same weekends, then I must choose between them and miss one; Yet there are so many weekends in May, June, September, and July that could have events scheduled to draw in the tourists. The thinking is, “If tourists are around to go to the County Fair (for instance), our event will have more people available in the area already to attend it.” As sensible as this sounds on the surface, I can’t help but question the soundness of the logic.
Of all the weekend festivals I’ve been to this year, only Galeton’s famous Independence Day fireworks drew a good crowd. Three music festivals of exceptional quality drew no more people for the dynamite closing acts than one would see in a popular night club Downstate. Coudersport’s Maple Festival and the Herb Festival were lightly attended, and Galeton’s Fall Fest and Kettle Creek Valley Outdoor Show have gotten smaller each year, to the break-even point. All these are (or were) popular events offering exceptional value for little or no entrance fee, but, despite all efforts to publicize them widely and in a more modern format, are just not drawing the attention they deserve.
This is just the most visible sign of our deteriorating tourist industry. Small businesses all over the region have closed their doors, “For Sale” signs sprouting like weeds. Individual entrepreneurs (such as myself, as a fly fishing guide) have been forced out of business, sometimes even forced to seek a full-time job to make ends meet, usually putting an end to our ability to do our tourist-related trade. Overhead for fishing guides is high (licensing requirements alone add up to over $1200 annually) and presumably the same is true for others. If we don’t get a certain amount of business, even doing it for the love of it becomes impossible.
A lot of this can be chalked up to Marcellus Shale exploitation, which has done a lot to ruin the esthetics, community budgets, and environment of the region and created little in the way of jobs and/or income. Environmentalists faced with this five years ago went into the dialogue with the energy companies and legislators prepared to compromise, but met with no similar attitude. No extraction tax was proposed to supplement communities suddenly forced to provide more services, nor to fund the environmental watchdog agencies to assure the gas extraction was done where and in such a way as to damage critical environment as little as possible, and absolutely no funding for cleaning up the inevitable mess the drillers will (and are already) leaving was provided for. The sustainable existing tourist industry was sacrificed for the profit of the few and (already) wealthy, at the expense of local residents dependant on it. Negative publicity aimed at generating concern about the reckless exploitation served to keep tourists away, and those that did visit the area could not avoid seeing unsightly drill sites, staging areas, and pipeline construction, not to mention ‘sharing’ the roads with convoys of construction trucks and tankers driven by people with no concept of safety on narrow mountain roads, especially in winter. Many long-time camp owners are selling out, too.
The history of the region shows this resource rape has occurred repeatedly: Oil, lumber and coal were exploited, each time leaving the ecology of the area a bit more damaged, each time leaving a mess that taxpayers and volunteers have had to work on and pay for, decades of repair that is not over even now and will never get things back to their pristine state. No one seems to learn this lesson. At least, no one in a position to do anything to prevent its recurrence. Sacrificing esthetic values on the altar of profit is the American Way.
It’s sad. Blogging is about how one feels about things, and this has saddened, infuriated, discouraged, and frustrated me. Seeing a disaster coming, writing and speaking and working to prevent it, then having the whole juggernaut roll over me, has flattened my soul. This place I love, being ruined. Other people that love it, forced to ‘sell out’ to the energy companies or starve. This knowledge was hammered home by attending these wonderful tourist events and seeing how few people were there to appreciate them. Come to the Pennsylvania Wilds soon, to enjoy the State’s last (marginally) unspoiled outdoor wonderland, while they still exist!
