The “New Jersey-New York Expansion Project” is a high-pressure gas pipeline, varying in diameter from 42-30″ routed up the New Jersey shoreline, through the edge of Staten Island, under Jersey City and across the Hudson River, entering Manhattan at the Gansevoort Peninsula in the West Village. It is known more commonly by the name of its builder’s parent company, Spectra Energy.
FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) is the lead agency in charge this project. It is filed under FERC Docket No. CP11-56-000. FERC is a federal agency mandated to process energy infrastructure as quickly as possible. While they are responsible for issuing Environmental Impact Statements (EIS), they are concerned only with whether procedure is followed, not with asking whether or not a particular project should or should not be built. As is standard practice, Spectra paid for the EIS for its own pipeline.
Although during the review of the draft EIS, there were nearly 5,000 public comments filed against it, and only 22 in favor (all but one from entities which would benefit from it), FERC has now approved the Spectra pipeline and it is currently under construction, despite pending lawsuits from the Sierra Club, Food and Water Watch, the City of Jersey City, and NoGasPipeline, a NJ advocacy group.
