South Haven News

By Claire Minor

On Oct. 8, 2025, South Haven Schools had a guest speaker from Southern Star Central Gas Pipeline for JHHS students during Cardinal Time. The speaker’s name was Corina Snyder. Snyder works out of Southern Star’s Wichita office and goes around and talks to kids about energy careers and 811 (call before you dig). Southern Star is a transmission pipeline company and they pass gas 6,000 miles across the United States, mainly in the midwest. 

Snyder first started off the talk by giving the students a safety moment where she talked about what to do in case of a weather emergency. Then she started to talk about what natural gas is used for and how it came about. When she was done, she showed the students a YouTube video that backed up her point.

After that, to further educate the students, she told them about what all of the pipeline and utility flags standardized color codes were. (White Flags: Proposed Excavation / Pink Flags: Temporary Survey / Red Flags: Electric Power, Conduit / Yellow Flags: Gas, Oil, Steam, Petroleum / Orange Flags: Communications / Blue Flags: Potable Water / Purple Flags: Reclaimed Water, Irrigation, Slurry / Green Flags: Sewer)

When she was finished explaining that, she passed around a stuffed animal that looked like a skunk. The toy had a sticker on the top that, if you scratched it, smelled like natural gas with mercaptan in it.

For those of you who don’t know, mercaptan is an organic compound with a very unpleasant smelling odor that is mainly used as a safety smell added to odorless gases (like propane) to let people know when there are gas leaks. When all of the students were done smelling it, she moved on. 

After she was done talking about the different positions at the company she informed the high school students that they have internship opportunities for all students who are at least 18 years old. And you don’t have to be in college to do them either. She said that if you end up getting the job (not the internship) you get a company truck and card. Her advice to the students was that if you are interested in working for a company, you need to apply to do an internship because during fall every year, companies post applications.

Snyder also said that if you like living in the country, energy jobs are great. They are also looking to add some more ladies to the industry since it’s currently made up of mostly men. Some perks to working for Southern Star is that they offer good pay, you get to do some traveling, and they do community service. 

When Snyder was done talking, as they walked out, the students got to pick up a star shaped multiple colored highlighter, an 811 magnet, and a tire gauge keychain. 

South Haven Schools allowing Southern Star to talk to the students about pipeline safety was an amazing idea. It’s always better to be safe than sorry! With that being said… Here’s what might happen if you DON’T call before you dig: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pHxdkutT570

REMINDER: If you would like to stay up-to-date with the events that South Haven Schools are involved with, check out USD509 South Haven on Facebook/Instagram or https://www.usd509.org/!