When Bill Barbic and Mike Broadwell took a road trip to northern Pennsylvania they left Schoharie County skeptics, but came back believers.
"Now, I'm not going to join your group, but I'm not a skeptic anymore," Mr. Barbic, the Town of Sharon's highway superintendent, told a crowd of about 75-most of them opposed to hydrofracking-Thursday.
"Yes, it's a mess. Yes, I'm glad it's here. They're destroying the roads."
Mr. Barbic and Mr. Broadwell, who's the Town of Carlisle's highway superintendent, traveled to PA to see firsthand fracking's impact on roads there.
Sharon, like other communities, is at work on a highway preservation law; Carlisle is considering doing the same.
But first, Mr. Barbic said, he wanted to see things for himself.
The two men traveled about 300 miles through PA, he said, and spoke to four different highway superintendents and town clerks.
Mr. Barbic said he no longer disputes estimates that a single natural gas well will generate 1,000 trucks a day as they deliver the water used to force gas from the wells.
Mr. Barbic said he and Mr. Broadwell had to count trucks from a distance; security at the wells is tight.
"With our New York license plate, we had an awful lot of white [security] pick-up trucks following us," he said.
"I'll tell you how many of them there are: There's a Ford dealer down there with a sign, 'We service all white trucks.' Swear to God."
Mr. Barbic said in the area they visited, gas companies aren't pumping water from wells, but rather buying it from the borough of Towanda, Bradford County, which sits at the NY-PA line.
Towanda is about twice the size of Cobleskill, he estimated, and every truck comes into Towanda to fill up.
"I was not highly impressed with the numbers," he said.
"They've set up meters on hydrants so trucks can fill anywhere."
The Village of Canajoharie has a water plant and with the loss of Beechnut, no one to sell it to, something that could create the same kind of situation here, several in the crowd pointed out.
Mr. Barbic said the gas companies are fixing damaged roads-but "not as fast as they're destroying them. The roads are gone."
He also said the PA highway superintendents-called supervisors there-told them traffic and accidents are issues, not just because of the fracking trucks, but from employees too.
Mr. Barbic said everyone they talked to in Pennsylvania is overwhelmed by fracking and when he showed them a draft of Sharon's highway preservation law, they told him it was their best bet.
"They said: Control the roads, you control the drilling. People in Pennsylvaina wish they'd done that...
"I've lived here all my life," Mr. Barbic said. "I want my grandchildren to grow up here. "I'm neutral on this. But if this is what happens..."

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Sharon will hold a public hearing on its draft highway preservation law at its September 7 meeting.
Subject to approval from the Joint Planning Board and Schoharie County Planning Commission, the law requires all "high frequency and industrial activities" to obtain a vehicle permit issued by the highway superintendent, post a $10,000 bond, and obtain $5 million in liability coverage.