Talking pipelines on WITF’s Smart Talk

Susan Phillips

Recent Stories

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.

August 11, 2015 | 2:34 PM

Kim Paynter / WHYY/Newsworks.org

A "pipebender" from Texas oversees plans to lay a new gas pipeline in Susquehanna County. Workers prepare to lay pipe in Susquehanna County.org

An estimated 30,000 new miles of pipeline will be built in Pennsylvania to accommodate the shale gas boom, according to the Wolf Administration. Some of these lines will be large, high pressure pipes that travel across state lines and are regulated by the federal government. But some are much smaller, carrying gas from the wellhead to larger lines that feed the interstate system. In rural areas, these lines are not regulated. And although detailed locations of all above ground infrastructure is available to the public at their finger tips, that underground system remains hidden.

WITF host Scott LaMar spoke with StateImpact reporter Susan Phillips about the dangers of unmapped pipes.

Many of those unmapped pipelines are also unregulated. These are rural gathering lines, or pipelines that take the gas from the wellhead to a larger transmission line, or gas processing facility. In this segment, LaMar speaks with reporter Susan Phillips about the thousands of miles of unregulated natural gas pipelines.