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Rockaway peninsula is a sliver of land roughly 10 miles long and half a mile wide that juts out from the New York City borough of Queens. Locally, it’s known for its beautiful beaches, its isolation from the rest of the city, and for being especially hard-hit by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Today, the Rockaways are in the news for a different reason — they are the proposed end-site of a new 23-mile pipeline that would run beneath lower New York Bay, carrying fracked natural gas from Pennsylvania to New York City.

Arlene Phipps, 64, is one of many residents concerned about the harm the project could potentially inflict on the community, especially in the case of another storm. Phipps had to leave her home for years because of damage from Sandy and has struggled to re-establish her home daycare business after returning this February.

“If the hurricane did what it did in 2012, God only knows what a pipeline — if something were to happen — I don’t know,” Phipps said, her voice trailing off. “God forbid if there was ever a leak or something or an explosion.”

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It’s not just residents of the Rockaways who are struggling with the project. Controversy over the Williams Pipeline has sparked something of a region-wide identity crisis. New York state is in the middle of a green makeover. Earlier this year, it was the first state to formulate its own Green New Deal. New York City is leading the U.S. in a green overhaul, passing a carbon pricing fee charging drivers in some of the most traffic-choked neighborhoods. Last week, the city council voted to pass a Climate Mobilization Act that includes bills to make infrastructure more energy-efficient.

Many activists say that, given New York’s new, greener identity, the state going forward with the Williams Pipeline doesn’t quite seem to compute. Fracking is a controversial process that involves shooting high-pressured water and chemicals deep into the earth to release hard-to-reach natural gas. It’s associated with public health threats including soil, water, and air contamination.

Critics of the project say construction of the underwater pipeline could dredge up arsenic, lead, and other dangerous metals from the seafloor. They also argue that the release of methane during fracking is a powerful contributor to a warming climate. Proponents, on the other hand, say natural gas is a cleaner source of energy than oil, and that the pipeline is needed to address the state’s energy needs. Either way, the project is difficult to reconcile with the state’s own environmental policies on sourcing natural gas — Governor Andrew Cuomo imposed a statewide fracking ban back in 2014.

“It’s incredibly hypocritical for us to ban fracking [in New York state] but then frack people in Pennsylvania,” said Lee Ziesche, Community Engagement Coordinator for Sane Energy Project, one of the New York-based groups leading a coalition to stop the pipeline from being built. “To be pushing for new fracked gas infrastructure, it’s the same as climate denialism really,” she contends, “You can’t say you’re a climate leader and then push these fracked gas projects.”

A Greener New York (but still not green enough?)

New York needs a lot of energy. Metropolitan New York surpassed all of the world’s other megacities (with populations over 10 million) in energy consumption, according to a 2015 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One way the state plans to address this need is to invest in renewable energy. As part of the state’s 2019 Executive Budget and proposed Green New Deal for New York, Cuomo mandated that the state’s electrical grid run on 100 percent clean power by 2040. It “builds on Governor’s Environmental Record, including banning fracking,” the press announcement says. But fracked natural gas also seems to be part of the Governor’s energy plans, provided it’s from outside the state. (Of note, Cuomo has political and financial ties to Williams Companies, having hired a lobbyist from Transco, a subsidiary of Williams, to run his re-election campaign. Williams later donated $100,000 to an organization that supports Cuomo)

The Williams Pipeline is one piece of the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project proposed by the Williams Companies, which also developed the contested Atlantic Sunrise Pipeline in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (it went into operation in 2018), and Constitution Pipeline, which was planned to run between New York and Pennsylvania but has hit several roadblocks to construction. Williams Companies says that building the New York pipeline would displace 13 million barrels of heating oil and slash tons of carbon emissions — equivalent to taking 500,000 cars off the road.

The Williams pipeline would bring New York City an additional 400 million cubic feet a day of natural gas. All that gas would increase utility provider National Grid’s capacity by 14 percent, which proponents say is necessary to meet growing demand and fulfill a city-mandated ban on using the dirtiest types of oil for heating. But the environmental group 350.org has challenged that argument, recently publishing a report that contends increased energy efficiency will ultimately lessen demand for natural gas, and that very few heating systems are left in the city that still need to switch from heavy oil to gas.

The battle over the proposed fracked gas pipeline is intensifying amid a flurry of recently introduced federal and local policies that make it unclear whether the state would have the power to stop the project, even if it decides it wants to.