By Benjamin J. Hulac, Julie Daurio | NJ Spotlight
WASHINGTON — A fossil energy company now has all the government approval it needs to expand a pipeline across New Jersey, through Raritan Bay, and into New York City after the Murphy administration late last week issued an essential permit.
Approving the project is a parting act by Gov. Phil Murphy, a term-limited Democrat, who, after President Donald Trump last year won a second term, said he would “not back down” on climate, no matter the administration.
New Jersey signed off on the project, called the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project, hours after New York authorities issued their permit — the final two steps needed for work to commence.
Environmental groups are challenging the project in federal and state courts.
Northeast pipeline project allowed to disrupt marine wildlife
In an interview Friday with NJ Spotlight News, Shawn LaTourette, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, said his agency approved the project because the U.S. government has exclusive jurisdiction over pipelines that cross state lines.
The state, he said, has the power to approve or deny permits on a project’s impact to air or water. “We’re not approving a pipeline,” LaTourette said. “We’re only evaluating its adverse environmental impacts and ensuring they are avoided or mitigated for.”
New Jersey environmental regulators twice denied environmental permits for the project, including in 2019, when the state blocked the project, saying dredging in the bay would stir up sediment contaminated with mercury, arsenic and PCBs — cancer-causing human-made compounds — impairing water quality. LaTourette says the most recent proposal addresses those concerns.
Approvals from both states follow sign-offs from a pair of federal bodies — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent body that regulates pipelines, which issued their own permits for the project.
The firm behind the project, the Oklahoma-based Williams Company, plans to build a 23.3-mile pipeline underneath Raritan Bay to bring gas from Pennsylvania, east through New Jersey and to Queens.
Specifically, the pipeline would link Sayreville to the Rockaway peninsula in Queens. Williams proposed drilling 163 piles into the bay floor with mechanical hammers and pistons to “liquefy” the earth below and mount the pipeline, which will be 26-inches in diameter.
The project also includes 3.6 miles of new pipeline to run through Middlesex County and about 10 miles of new pipeline in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
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