COURIER LIFE, MAR. 26-APR. 1, 2021 9
by Sane Energy Project;
Cooper Park Resident
Council, a nonprofi t that
advocates for the namesake
nearby public housing
complex; along with
Christine Facella, Eric
Kun, and William Vega,
who all live within a few
blocks of the facility.
In nine separate affi -
davits, plaintiffs and area
residents raised their concerns
about the project,
including emissions from
the Energy Center and
trucking the gas to and
from the facility, which
they said would further
pollute north Brooklyn,
adding to the area’s extensive
history of pollution
in the air and the soil as a
result of local industry.
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
They’re turning up
the heat!
A group of north
Brooklynites and local environmentalists
are suing
New York State and National
Grid, raising pollution
concerns surrounding
the utility’s planned
gas depot expansion in
East Williamsburg.
Nonprofi t Sane Energy
Project, along with
a group of residents, fi led
the suit in Queens County
Supreme Court on March
18, alleging the state’s Department
of Environmental
Conservation wrongly
determined that there
would not be a signifi cant
negative impact from
National Grid’s plans to
grow its natural gas capacity
at its Maspeth Avenue
facility.
Several of the plaintiffs
and their organizations
have also previously
protested the utility’s
controversial four-year,
seven-mile fracked gas
pipeline expansion from
Brownsville to East Williamsburg
for the past
year.
Nat Grid applied with
the state agency last year
for a different air permit
for its facility near Newtown
Creek, dubbed the
Greenpoint Energy Center,
which included installing
new vaporizers.
The company currently
has six vaporizers
to transform natural
gas that’s stored in liquid
form — also known as liquefi
ed natural gas, or LNG
— back into gas to heat
the borough’s households.
The new infrastructure
will increase capacity by
31 percent, according to
National Grid, but the petitioners
lament that the
expansion could up emissions
of greenhouse gasses
by the same rate.
The utility said they
need the new vaporizers
to meet higher gas demand
during peak use
times.
DEC determined that
the new vaporizers would
not have a signifi cant impact
on the surrounding
environment and would
thus not require a more
thorough environmental
assessment.
State environmental
honchos have not yet approved
the application,
but the petitioners fi led
their lawsuit now, ahead
of any major construction
by National Grid.
The plaintiffs claimed
that National Grid lowballed
its potential emissions
fi gures in the application
by saying it would
only use the new vaporizers
for two weeks out
of the year, despite there
being no 14-day use limit
in its permits. The pollution
calculations also
didn’t account for greenhouse
gasses the facilities
might release via fl aring
or venting, according to
the petition.
Increased pollution
alone should have warranted
a more thorough
review from DEC honchos,
argue the plaintiffs,
but the agency also failed
to consider National
Grid’s controversial ongoing
pipeline expansion
and city permit applications
for trucking LNG
in-and-out of the north
Brooklyn facility.
The fi fth and fi nal
phase of the pipeline —
dubbed the Metropolitan
Natural Gas Reliability
Project — will be used
to help funnel more gas
around the network, and
the trucking is needed to
deliver the fossil fuel to
the north Brooklyn site.
Taking all these projects
as a whole would have a
bigger environmental impact
on the area than just
focusing on the vaporizers,
according to the suit.
“DEC was required to
consider the entirety of
this action, rather than
segmenting the vaporizers
and dismissing their
environmental impacts
in a vacuum,” the legal fi lings
read.
Petitioners called on
the state judge to stop National
Grid from proceeding
on the project until
DEC can conduct a more
thorough environmental
review, which also includes
the pipeline and
trucking, and ensure
the plan complies with
the State Environmental
Quality Review Act, or
SEQRA.
The lawsuit was fi led
Protesters occupy National Grid’s Jay Street offi ce lobby
during an Oct. 22 protest. Lisette DeJesus
Environmentalists sue state, Nat
Grid over gas depot expansion