The Fight Against This NYC Area Pipeline Is Not Over

If constructed, the NESE pipeline would connect to an existing pipeline in Pennsylvania and then, after passing through New Jersey, run 23 miles underneath the ecologically sensitive Raritan Bay and the lower New York–New Jersey Harbor. The pipeline would end a few miles off the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, New York. 

In addition to the new stretch of offshore pipeline, the project also proposes building nearly 3.5 miles of onshore pipeline near and through New Jersey wetlands. And it would necessitate building a new natural gas compressor station in northern New Jersey too—a tax on local air quality in one of the most populous regions of the country. 

This very same proposal has failed several times. However, emboldened by the new political landscape and the Trump administration’s call for fossil fuel expansion, Williams tried its luck again and resubmitted the application for another go-round. 

“Both states have taken 180-degree turns from their previous legal and scientific determinations,” says Mark Izeman, senior strategist with NRDC’s environmental health team. “And they’ve given no reasoned explanation for reversing course.”

The state water quality certificates from New York and New Jersey were one of the final steps to getting the project off the ground. Earlier this year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission also issued a rushed federal permit for the pipeline, which NRDC and Earthjustice attorneys are challenging in court due to its reliance on an outdated application that doesn’t account for current cost estimates, gas demand, or air pollution standards. Alarmingly, Williams doesn’t explain how it would avoid violating water quality standards. 

The proposed dredging methods are also particularly damaging. “There’s not a good way to dredge here that’s protective for the environment,” Knicley says, “but they’ve chosen some of the most destructive ways possible.” 

Burying a pipeline under a 23-mile stretch of seabed is inherently disruptive—but particularly so when the waterway in question has accumulated decades’ worth of pollution in its sediment. Left undisturbed, the harbor’s seabed has captured and contained pollutants that range from neurotoxic heavy metals like mercury, copper, and lead to synthetic “forever chemicals” such as PCBs and carcinogenic dioxins. 

Dredging the seabed effectively kicks up this toxic history. The pollution would endanger still-recovering wildlife populations, such as oysters, clams, and other shellfish. Meanwhile, at the top of the food chain, species such as striped bass and humpback whales would ingest the largest amount of the contamination due to bioaccumulation. The pollution would also be a risk to public health.

“The water quality violations are really foundational,” Knicley says. “Can you safely swim here? Can you safely eat fish from here?”

Tens of thousands of people live near NESE’s impact zone—and even more enjoy New York and New Jersey’s beaches each year. “Our kids, when they were young, spent hours a day in the water,” Flynn recalls. “To see it become a cesspool, it’s horrifying.” 

At the heart of the company’s argument for the pipeline is the claim that National Grid, the primary gas utility serving downstate New York, would struggle to reliably meet gas demand without NESE, particularly for heating during big winter storms. But this justification proves false, even when crunching the numbers from the New York Public Service Commission. 

That’s the state regulatory agency tasked with setting utility rate increases and deciding whether the pipeline is necessary. The commission green-lit the project in its recently finalized long-term plan, despite the fact that in September, it determined that New York wouldn’t face any supply issues for at least 15 years.

Back in 2024, the commission did rely on a dire prediction from National Grid about the state’s inability to meet the demand for gas, but “anyone paying attention knew that this forecast was systemically inflated,” says Chris Casey, NRDC’s director of utility regulations in New York.  

And the updated data showed that the NESE would effectively be an unnecessary and very pricey insurance policy. In a petition requesting the commission to rescind its approval, NRDC points out that it relied on outdated forecasts and failed to complete necessary cost-benefit analyses. 

Meanwhile, smarter solutions already exist that can meet projected demand, especially given that NESE itself would only increase downstate New York’s natural gas supply by 13 percent. “Instead, we need to go heavy on energy efficiency and electrification and then do everything we can to get clean energy to meet our power needs,” Casey says. 

Such alternatives—which would look like weatherizing and electrifying outdated buildings so that they require less gas for heating—would help solve supply issues. They would also have reverberating benefits, such as creating jobs, improving local air quality, and saving consumers money on their winter heating bills.  

Even the city of New York, which would receive gas from the pipeline, agrees. In its comments on the commission’s long-term plan, city officials described NESE as a “leap backwards.” They went on to state that “National Grid had identified solutions to reliability concerns…and offers nothing now to explain why building NESE should be a preferred alternative.” 

According to the National Grid, NESE would reduce energy costs for New Yorkers, but this claim rests on a flawed analysis and hinges on statewide benefits that are largely speculative. Even under National Grid’s own assumptions, its downstate customers—those in New York City and Long Island residents—would be footing the pipeline’s entire $1 billion–plus bill over the next 15 years. 

These customers could expect more than a 3.5 percent increase in their gas bills that would effectively subsidize any of NESE’s theoretical benefits to the state.

“Are we just going to charge regular New Yorkers, who are already struggling with their utility bills?” asks Kim Fraczek, the director of the environmental nonprofit Sane Energy Project, which has fought the pipeline since its initial proposal. “This doesn’t sit well with us.” 

As mandated by New York’s own climate law, the state needs to drastically reduce carbon emissions to meet its 40 percent reduction target by 2030—a goal that it’s already woefully behind on.

But with a federal administration that’s openly hostile to clean energy, elected state officials, including those in Albany, may see an all-of-the-above approach to energy policy as the safer political bet. The fact remains, however, that relying on fossil fuels is neither environmentally nor economically sound. 

NESE would lock New York into decades of natural gas consumption right when the state should be picking up the pace on climate action. Williams’s pipeline would also reduce the urgency for clean energy investment and likely encourage regulators to lean more heavily on natural gas simply to get the most out of their investment. 

“Regulators don’t tend to approve major infrastructure projects and then regulate in a way that they go underutilized,” Casey says. “It enables and creates pressure to increase gas demand—growth that isn’t planned and runs against state climate policy—just to defray the project’s substantial costs.” 

With Clean Water Act certificates from both states in hand, Williams has gotten further with its NESE project now than it has in the past. But the battle against the pipeline continues, inside and outside the courtroom. 

Lawsuits at the federal level and a petition for the New York Public Service Commission to revoke its approval are already underway. And as always, NRDC is pushing for the kind of clean energy initiatives, such as offshore wind development and energy efficiency programs, that demonstrate how fossil fuel projects like NESE are indeed unnecessary.