The proposed pipeline has faced fierce opposition from New Yorkers who say the pipeline is unnecessary and poses significant risks to human and marine health as well as greatly contributing to climate change. "Considering how vulnerable New York City is to extreme weather and flooding, it's difficult to seriously consider candidates who aren't ready to oppose polluting infrastructure that threatens our future." "Rejecting dangerous fossil fuel projects like the Williams gas pipeline, and instead supporting clean, safer energy infrastructure should be a no-brainer for Public Advocate candidates," said Patrick Houston, the Climate and Inequality Campaigns Associate with New York Communities for Change. ![]() It would come as close as a mile to Staten Island and continue past Coney Island and other Brooklyn beaches to link up with two existing pipelines off the Rockaway shore. The 23-mile pipeline proposed by Williams, an Oklahoma-based company, would transport fracked gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania through New Jersey and New York Harbor to Rockaway. The pledge is being circulated by the Stop the Williams Pipeline NY coalition and so far has been signed by Nomiki Konst, Jumaane Williams, Rafael Espinal, Eric Ulrich, Michael Blake and David Eisenbach. And the air in New Jersey will be also polluted by regularly scheduled and unplanned “blowdowns" where the gas and accumulated pollutants are released from the stations directly into the surrounding air - in this case right near residents, businesses, and popular fishing and outdoor recreational sites like the Monksville Reservoir.Ahead of the first televised debate happening tomorrow, February 6, a growing number of candidates running for New York City Public Advocate have signed on to a pledge opposing the Williams Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) fracked gas pipeline. None of the gas transported by the East 300 project will even be used in New Jersey, yet we will suffer the consequences if there is groundwater pollution from chromium, benzene, and hydrocarbons from the construction and ongoing operation of these stations. Increasing New York’s reliance on gas is incompatible with the state’s Climate Leadership and Communities Protection Act, a law that is already being used to reject other dirty and destructive fossil fuel expansion projects. With the ongoing decline in the cost of solar and wind renewables, combined with proven and readily deployable technologies like electric heat systems, the economic feasibility of the East 300 Upgrade Project is in doubt, especially over the long term. The Institute for Policy Integrity, a non-partisan organization at New York University School of Law, used a federal government model to calculate that the project would be responsible for damage of more than $131 million per year. TGP representatives themselves project annual emissions from the East 300 project at more than 2.34 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. That bizarre conclusion is music to the ears of the fossil fuel industry, which at least acknowledges on paper that burning more fossil fuels creates more fossil fuel pollution. In its recent analysis of the Tennessee Gas project, the agency wrote that it had not “identified a methodology to attribute discrete, quantifiable, physical effects on the environment resulting from the Project’s incremental contribution to GHGs. ![]() FERC recently issued the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the inaptly named “East 300 Upgrade Project,” a proposal by Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company to greatly increase the volume of fracked gas through a decaying 70-year-old pipeline it operates from Pennsylvania across northern New Jersey to New York.ĭespite decades of scientific research providing evidence that burning fossil fuels is driving the climate crisis, FERC has been very slow to recognize these impacts when assessing new projects. Those trends are evident here in New Jersey. FERC has approved 99% of applications for permits for gas industry pipelines and compressor stations, denying just two of these permits out of 500 applications since 1999. While FERC is basically unknown to the general public, the gas industry knows the commission to be an extremely friendly governmental partner. As Hurricane Ida battered New Jersey in September with two to three inches of rain per hour - leaving 91 people dead, including 31 here in our state - staffers at an agency called the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission were reviewing proposals for new fossil fuel projects, all of which would contribute to the warming that is driving the climate crisis and supercharging storms like Ida.
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