Fractivists Urge DRBC to Regulate Pipeline Construction

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.

September 12, 2012 | 4:35 PM

Kim Paynter / Newsworks/WHYY

Workers build the Laser pipeline in Susquehanna County, Pa.

The Delaware River Basin Commission continues to remain silent on new drilling regulations for the watershed. The commissioners may be waiting for New York to complete its regulatory update. But the most recent news from Gov. Cuomo’s office did not indicate those rules are coming soon.
In the meantime, pipeline construction in Pennsylvania is booming. Smaller lines from wellheads, as well as large interstate lines like the Laser pipeline, and the Marc 1 Hub line will go below rivers and streams. Activists who want the DRBC to ban gas drilling also want the commission to start weighing in on pipelines that waterways, which feed the Delaware River.
Maya von Rossum, from the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, spoke at a public meeting today at the DRBC in Trenton.
“With nearly a dozen new pipelines or expansions proposed to cross within the watershed boundaries in order to serve the shale gas drilling industry,” said von Rossum. “We are on the cusp of a new and yet-to-be-recognized environmental hazard for our communities.”
Von Rossum, and several other environmental groups, served the commission with a petition stating that the agency has an obligation to regulate pipelines within the watershed.