“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.’
“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.”
“‘As demand continues to grow, especially in densely populated areas like Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island, so too must the capacity to deliver reliable energy,’ Williams said in an overview of the project.”
“Environmental groups tore into the Murphy administration’s decision.
‘Governor Murphy’s unconscionably dangerous final approval of a polluting methane gas pipeline reverses decades of improvement in our state’s air and water quality, and reverses his own previous permit denial for this pipeline,’ Jeffrey Williams, legislative coordinator for the Jersey Shore chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, said, while Amy Goldsmith called the approval ‘despicable.'”
Read the full story on NJ Spotlight News:
https://www.njspotlightnews.org/2025/11/murphy-signs-off-on-gas-pipeline/
