Rockaway gas pipeline completed

From The Wave:

For the past week or so, natural gas has been flowing underneath Rockaway’s beaches through a massive 26-inch diameter pipeline.

The activation of a new 3.2-mile pipeline on May 15 allows for liquefied natural gas to flow through the Rockaway Peninsula and into Brooklyn to satisfy the growing demand of 1.8 million customers in Queens and Brooklyn.

The fracked-gas transmission pipeline called the Rockaway Delivery Lateral has been controversial among anti-fracking activists and environmental groups since the inception phase in 2009.

The additional pipeline, which began construction on June 9, 2014, extends from the existing Lower New York Bay Lateral, which is in the Atlantic Ocean, running parallel to the coast of the Peninsula.

The Rockaway Delivery Lateral runs across Fort Tilden and Jacob Riis Park – wetlands and recreational areas – to a facility used to meter and regulate the flow of natural gas, located on Floyd Bennett Field in an abandoned airplane hanger, within the Gateway National Recreation Area.

Williams Partners’ Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. LLC’s (Transco) pipeline project increases the compression at three existing Transco facilities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and provides 100,000 dekatherms more per day to be transferred to the new meter and regulating station on Floyd Bennett Field.

“That’s the point where we kind of hand off the gas,” said Williams Spokesman Chris Stockton. “It measures how much gas flows through the line and it also regulates the pressure.”

In total, 647,000 dekatherms per day can be be transmitted through the new Rockaway Pipeline to the National Grid distribution system. From there, the National Grid Pipeline takes the natural gas up Flatbush Avenue and into other communities.

Concern about gas pipeline under Rockaway

From WPIX:

Every night, a group of Rockaway residents watches with fear and worry as work is underway out at sea for the little publicized Rockaway Lateral Project Pipeline.

“It’s doesn’t matter if it’s on federal property,” Sandra Schunk told PIX11. ” It’s still our beach, our lives.”

Residents say the pipeline has gotten little attention because it’s mostly on federal property, the Gateway National Recreational Area.

It will eventually bring 647,000 dekartherms per day of fracked natural gas from the Marcellus Shale under high-pressure, beneath the beach, under a golf course, under the Marine Parkway bridge, through Floyd Bennett Field and eventually to distribution lines of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn.

Community board member John Gaska told PIX11, “The board approved the pipeline. We have concerns about safety but it’s a positive for the community. Gas will be cheaper.”

When I saw the title of the video, "Queens residents fighting construction of Rockaway Pipeline", I thought I was going to read about an actual fight, but instead this report was just about a bunch of folks who are concerned but not doing much of anything about it. Oh well.

Gas pipeline hearing tonight

From Metro:

The first of two Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Public Hearings over a proposed Rockaway gas pipeline will be taking place at the Knights of Columbus Rockaway Council 267 at 333 Beach 90th Street starting at 7 p.m.

The pipeline, to be built by Williams Transco and National Grid, is being hit with much of the same criticism as the Spectra Pipeline planned for lower Manhattan.

Both pipelines would bring shale gas — produced by fracking — to the city. Opponents are complaining that the review period has not been long enough and that environmental and safety concerns are not being adequately considered.

This pipeline would be embedded in the ocean floor, run under the sandy bank of Riis Park Beach, cross below the Rockaway Inlet and continue up Flatbush avenue to a Metering and Regulation facility. The facility would be built in two of the old abandoned airplane hangars at Floyd Bennet Field.

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Addabbo says frack no!

From the Queens Gazette:

On Wednesday August 11, just back from the end of a rare summer session in Albany, state Senator Joseph P. Addabbo, Jr., reports that due largely as a result of the public support to hold off on a natural gas drilling process known as hydrofracking, the senate passed legislation that would put a hold on hydrofracking in the state. The legislation, which now goes to the Assembly for a vote, would stop the issuing of upstate drilling permits until May 2011.

Senator Addabbo noted, “I co-sponsored this moratorium bill (S8129B/Thompson) to provide the state a much-needed opportunity to fully review the potential negative side effects of this kind of drilling.”

The Senate passed a 10-month moratorium on gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale to prevent the potentially hazardous contamination of the state’s water supply. Through the moratorium, gas and oil companies would be restricted from hastily endangering the health and economic well-being of more than 12 million local residents who draw their water from the affected area by engaging a process known as hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracking.

Hydrofracking is the process of breaking apart the rock under the earth, in which some natural resources are trapped, by forcing millions of gallons of waters mixed with chemicals into the ground. These chemicals then work their way into the regular water supply.

DEC limits hydrofracking

From the Daily News:

New York's water supply got new protection from natural-gas companies Friday after environmental regulators put up a roadblock on drilling near city reservoirs.

Any gas well in the 2,000-square-mile upstate watershed will require a costly and complex environmental review, the Department of Environmental Conservation said.

Gas companies wanted to use a new technique called "hydrofracking" to pump a chemical stew underground and force out gas from an underground formation called the Marcellus Shale.

The DEC hopes to complete a statewide policy for Marcellus hydrofracking later this year, but Friday's decision means the unfiltered reservoirs that feed New York City will be exempted from the statewide rules, as will Syracuse's reservoir.