Fracking Foes Turn to Direct Action

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

December 2, 2011 | 2:46 PM

Maybe they’ve gotten a bit of Occupy fever, because it looks like “fractivists” are starting to risk arrest while protesting gas drilling. A group of Oberlin College students blocked trucks at the entrance to a Youngstown, Ohio company this week. D&L Energy operates deep well injection sites, which are often used to dispose of drilling waste water. Police arrested seven protestors, who have been released on bail, which ranged from $2500 to $7500 dollars.
Also this week, protestors in Lancashire, England climbed up a drill rig and refused to come down. Police arrested two of the drill rig occupiers, but six others remain.