On Friday, Staten Island Borough President Vito Fossella publicly declared his opposition to the recently-revived Williams NESE pipeline project, adding his voice to a growing chorus of elected officials in New York City. Like many other stakeholders in the Big Apple's most overlooked borough, Fossella is concerned with the environmental damage to the coastline that will almost certainly be a consequence of constructing the pipeline, which would run along the seabed of Raritan Bay, bringing more natural gas to parts of Long Island from Pennsylvania.
The potential for damage to the bay is a sensitive issue for Staten Islanders, where many can remember times where the polluted waters held no life and were considered hazardous to swim in. "If you went in and out of the water, you came out with tar, glass was everywhere, anything and everything imaginable was in the water" Fossella recalled of his time on the beaches in the 70s, as he spoke alongside fishermen at Great Kills Harbor. But a decades-long effort at cleaning up the Raritan Bay has yielded results, with dolphins and whales being sighted regularly, as well as fishermen reporting better and more varied catches than before. "We've seen this progress over the last forty plus years, and we want to keep it that way," Fossella said. "And our concern over this new project is, will we disrupt that progress?" Construction of the pipeline is expected to dredge up sediment in the bay, unleashing harmful chemicals like mercury, dioxins, and PCBs.
Politicians like Fossella might have a challenging task weighing pros and cons, like cuts in energy bills or a boost to local jobs on one hand against damage to the ecosystem on the other. In this case, however, he says his opposition was relatively straightforward. "We get no real benefit from it because it's designed to carry gas to the other parts of the region, so it's not like it's coming to Staten Island so there's a trade-off," he told La Voce in an interview after the press conference, also noting that the pipeline's would-be operator, National Grid, has already acknowledged that electricity rates in Staten Island would go up by 3.5 percent because of the pipeline.
The Williams NESE Pipeline was first proposed in 2019, the same year the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act became law, which legally commits New York State to reduce fossil fuel emissions over the coming decades. New York State's Department of Environmental Protection, backed by vocal opposition from activists, shot down the proposal by denying the project a water quality permit. The DEP would do so again in 2020, and the federal permit for the project expired in 2024. Since Trump took office, Williams Transco, the pipeline's would-be constructor, has resubmitted an application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and is engaging once again with state agencies in New York and New Jersey to secure permits that it had been denied previously.
Fossella, a Trump-endorsed Republican, is not known for taking up environmental causes. During his time as a congressman representing New York's 11 district, he was rated just 10% by the League of Conservation Voters in 2003, meaning that they lacked confidence in him on the issue. He voted for a measure that would speed up approval of forest-thinning projects that same year, and also voted in favor of a measure deauthorizing "critical habitat" for endangered species in 2005. Today, he backs the conclusions that state agencies had reached twice over on the NESE pipeline half a decade ago. "In terms of where we're standing, i think they were right in 2019 when they said 'why are we doing this and disturbing all these sediments?'" he said during the press conference.
Speaking with La Voce on Friday, Fossella could not think of anything that National Grid could offer that would outweigh his concerns about environmental damage to the bay.