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New York and New Jersey Approve NESE Gas Pipeline, Setting Up Court Fight

Regulators set a four-foot seafloor burial depth for the route that now faces legal tests.

Overview

  • New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation granted permits including a water quality certification and a wastewater discharge permit, concluding that burying the line four feet below the seafloor is acceptable to limit suspended sediment.
  • The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection issued a water quality certificate and a coastal wetlands permit, with officials saying revised designs meet state rules and cut wetlands impacts at a planned compressor station.
  • The project would lay a 24-mile undersea pipeline from New Jersey through Raritan Bay and Lower New York Bay to near the Rockaway Peninsula, supplying Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island via Williams’s Transco system.
  • Environmental groups led by the NRDC say they will challenge the approvals in federal court, citing risks from disturbing contaminated sediments and damage to marine habitat and fisheries.
  • Williams targets in-service by the end of 2027 and has withdrawn its separate Constitution pipeline water-permit application, while a political dispute continues over Trump’s claim of a pipelines-for-wind understanding that Gov. Kathy Hochul denies.