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DEC signs on as Co-Lead Agency for Pilgrim Pipeline NY Thruway Proposal

Posted on 21 December 2015 by Editor

Proposed route of the Pilgrim Pipelines adjacent to Sloatsburg and set to pass between Cranberry and Potake Lakes in the Ramapo Mountains.

Pilgrim Pipelines skirts Sloatsburg in the Ramapo Mountains.

Monday’s DEC co-lead agency decision may cause some disappointment. The concern is the proposed Pilgrim Pipeline oil route criss-crosses sensitive and protected NY waterways and wetlands some 232 times.

Those crossings are also in the vicinity of peoples back yards.

Facts that have triggered New York Department of Environmental Review interest and action, which the agency took Monday in a DEC General Council co-lead letter to the NY Thruway Authority citing permitting and review authority.

Pilgrim Pipeline proposes to run an assortment oil and gas products back and forth between Albany and refineries in Linden, NJ.

Locally, a concern might be that the pipeline looks to skirt Sloatsburg backyards and wetlands and streams that in turn flow into the near Ramapo River. Think of Nakoma Brook and the stream that runs down Eagle Valley and into the Ramapo River at Rhodes Tavern.

Some 58 towns and villages along the proposed pipeline route are acting to cut off municipal throughway access for the project which already relies heavily on Thruway and private property.

In its proposed form, the oil pipeline would run along NY Thruway Authority property and private properties, skirting through western Rockland County, and presumably slicing through or near Potake and Cranberry Lakes in Pierson Lakes.

Both lakes eventually merge with Ramapo River waters — the Ramapo is an important waterway and sole source aquifer — i.e., drinking water, for hundreds of thousands in parts of New York and northern New Jersey.

The pipeline would also pass through Hillburn on its way south into New Jersey and includes two 178-mile long parallel runs between Albany and Linden, New Jersey route.

Presumably there’s renumeration to the Thruway Authority for the flow of refined oil products such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene and home heating oil north, and Bakken crude oil south.

 

 

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