Karen Heller: Thar's the makin's of a Marcellus movie

Thank you, State Rep. Mike Sturla! As the rest of us fret about the economy, earthquakes, and parts of the world erupting, the Lancaster Democrat worries about womenfolk, the Marcellus Shale, and a more intimate form of drilling.

"Exactly what are all those things the drillers are doing for the local communities?" Sturla observed last week. "Patronizing the bars at night? Driving up the cost of rental housing? Spreading sexually transmitted disease amongst the womenfolk?"

Susquehanna Health's Susan Browning said, "Internally, there were reports through our own emergency department and center for reproductive health that, 'Hey, there seem to be more STDs, and they seem to be in young men with a Western accent.' "

Western accents, womenfolk, and boomtowns in the bucolic countryside evoke a Pennsylvania Northern Tier version of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Robert Altman's 1971 classic film about prostitutes, opium, and a mumbling Warren Beatty set in a turn-of-the-century Western mining town. Prostitution, like natural gas extraction, is another industry the state fails to tax properly, along with its sibling profession of lobbying. In Harrisburg, lobbyists pay only $100 every two years to help corporations dodge taxes.

Then again, as Mitt Romney says, corporations are people, my friend.

At two hospitals in gas-rich Lycoming County, gonorrhea diagnoses doubled in one year and more than quadrupled the year before, according to The Inquirer's Don Sapatkin. Chlamydia increased 26 percent in one year, 33 percent over two years. Rates are the true indicator of health issues and are hard to measure among a transient population, but the number of cases is certainly up.

With such a large influx of temporary residents, increases are likely in any illness - STDs, pink eye, flu.

In fact, almost everything is up: business, traffic, arrests. Rural Bradford County, with almost 63,000 residents, has attracted 20,000 industry workers. Houses that rented for $500 a month now go for $4,500. Some low-income residents are being pushed to the street. But there are also more well-paying jobs for local residents.

Even after the womenfolk kerfuffle last week - the term is more fusty than bothersome - Sturla charged ahead. If you don't think politics is behind his critique, think again. Democrats are upset that Gov. Corbett and other Republicans won't tax/fee/whatever gas extraction.

"I'm offended by the drillers' actions and their willingness to come in in a Wild West way," Sturla said. "I think that's where the offense is. Maybe these guys are gentlemen that just spread sexually transmitted diseases, I don't know."

Now, wait a doggone minute, pardner. As Desiree Rockwell, director of a local social services agency, observed: "Who knows, maybe we are giving it to them."

Taking care of business is a county tradition. Sheriff C.J. Walters noted, "Our locals are just as good at getting in trouble as people from out of town."

Indeed, what I hear is that some local womenfolk see opportunity in these well-paid, gas-enriched strangers with their trucks sporting Texas and Colorado plates, An Officer and a Gentleman playing out in the Endless Mountains.

How could we have overlooked the natural romance inherent in natural gas? Why aren't we exploiting boom times for their artistic and commercial potential?

If Gov. Frackenstein won't tax natural gas, perhaps he will tax movies made about untaxed natural gas, Westerns set in the Wild East. Consider License to Drill, starring Ryan Gosling as the handsome, laconic stranger from Texas, patronizing bars, driving up rents, spreading love amongst the womenfolk, like sassy, headstrong local lass Emma Stone, who sees him as her one-way ticket out of Towanda. Or Fricking and Fracking, a romantic romp where Tioga County barkeep Natalie Portman shows Okie gas wrangler Seth Rogen that her love is as deep and wide as the Marcellus Shale, as natural and rich as the gas below.

I'm telling you, there's gold in them thar wells.

or @kheller on Twitter.

Read her past columns at www.philly.com/KarenHeller.