Protectors of Pine Oak Woods is profoundly disturbed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) decision to approve the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline.
This choice reverses the original 2020 denial by the DEC, and opens the door to a massive new fossil fuel pipeline through the Raritan and Lower New York Bays. Running along the shoreline from Tottenville to Midland Beach, Staten Islanders will be made to foot the bill for another project they will not benefit from.
Technically speaking, NESE consists of roughly 23.5 miles of 26-inch diameter underwater pipeline, with approximately 17.4 miles in New York State waters, carrying up to 400,000 dekatherms per day of additional gas to National Grid customers in Brooklyn, Queens, and Long Island.
This will be built by intensive jet trenching, clamshell dredging, backfilling, and horizontal directional drilling, activities that will disturb contaminated sediments, destroy benthic habitat, and degrade water quality across one of the most important and hard-won recovering estuarine systems in the region.
The state’s own documents acknowledge the scale of ecological harm this project will cause, estimating that impacts will be significant enough to require at least $13.5 million in mitigation for endangered sturgeon populations, $5 million for winter flounder, and $5 million for hard clams.
Public opposition to this project has been overwhelming. The state reports that it received roughly 17,000 new comments during the 2025 public comment period, the vast majority opposing NESE.
Those comments raised concerns about water quality, ecology, climate, public health, environmental justice, and the adequacy of the review process. The state’s summary groups these concerns into categories, then dismisses many of them as “outside the scope” of the agency’s authority, emphasizing again and again that the review is limited to water quality standards.
José Ramírez-Garofalo is an environmentalist and the current president of Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, Staten Island’s largest environmental conservation organization. The group is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025. (Advance/SILive.com| Jan Somma-Hammel)(Advance/SILive.com| Jan Somma-Hammel)
The result is an approval that feels procedurally tidy but substantively out of step with what New Yorkers, and particularly frontline coastal communities, have asked (and voted) for: A rapid, just transition away from fossil fuels, not a deeper entrenchment.
We understand that the state has been dealt a bad hand by the federal government, whose environmental policies now restrict the state’s ability to lead, and that favor a regression on sustainability. However, New York’s history of environmental leadership dictates that the governor should have fought them on this issue from the beginning rather than allow cynical actors to prevail.
This is a profound warning sign for New York’s climate future. The state’s core environmental agency has now put in writing that a major new fossil fuel project conflicts with our Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (the “Climate Act”)but is being allowed anyway. That is not what New Yorkers were promised when the Climate Act was passed, nor is it consistent with our state’s spirit of environmental justice.
We can and will oppose this decision and project to the furthest extent possible, and call on elected leaders from across New York City and the region broadly to join us in this opposition.
Jose Ramirez-Garofalo, an ecologist, is president of Protectors of Pine Oak Woods.
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