A Pipeline Battle in the Heart of Brooklyn

Opposition to a power plant and natural gas pipeline, which snakes through communities of color in Brooklyn, is heating up.

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Last Wednesday, during a contentious virtual hearing, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) allowed public comment on the proposed plan by the multinational utility company National Grid to expand its gas storage facility in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York. A chorus of residents, community leaders, environmental activists, and nearly a dozen elected officials (including representatives for Congresswomen Nydia Velazquez and Carolyn Maloney) blasted the project, raising concerns over the potential risks it could pose for the surrounding communities. National Grid’s proposed Greenpoint Energy Center project will expand its existing facility by adding equipment that transforms liquid gas into vapor. Although National Grid assures that the project is safe, opponents contend that the project will dangerously increase air pollution and will impact the community’s public health and quality of life.

For opponents, the Greenpoint Energy Center project is the crown jewel of National Grid’s seven-mile-long Metropolitan Natural Gas Reliability Project, colloquially known as the North Brooklyn Pipeline. The fight against the expansion of the Greenpoint facility is only the latest chapter in a protracted battle between the giant utility company and an alliance of community and environmental activists, who fear that the introduction of more fossil fuel infrastructure in Brooklyn will have detrimental environmental and health effects on working-class communities of color.

“The pipeline goes through environmental-justice communities with incredibly high risk for asthma,” said Lee Ziesche, community engagement coordinator with the Sane Energy Project, a grassroots environmental-justice group. “These communities have been speaking up against it, and National Grid just keeps building.”

The opposition to the North Brooklyn Pipeline is part of a series of struggles against the building of fossil fuel infrastructure amid the climate crisis, similar to fights across the country over the Keystone XL, Dakota Access, and Line 3 pipelines, as well as several successful attempts to shut down coal-fired power plants. In this case, as in so many others, vulnerable communities of color will suffer the most impacts from dirty-energy pollution.

Elisha Fye, who prefers to go by “EW” and is African American, has lived in Greenpoint since 1953. To him, the racial disparity of the pipeline’s planned path could not be more apparent.

“This pipeline, I looked at the schematics, it goes through all the Black and brown communities, and ends up in ours, which is a Black and brown community,” he said during his hearing testimony. “We cannot go on like this, living life in fear because of big companies doing harm to our communities.”

A longtime resident of Cooper Park, a public-housing complex of approximately 701 families located just a stone’s throw away from the facility, EW is no stranger to the environmental injustices that have plagued his community. Beginning in 1950, oil refineries owned by ExxonMobil, BP, and ChevronTexaco leaked nearly 30 million gallons of oil into nearby Newtown Creek, causing one of the largest oil spills to occur on U.S. soil. At least 50 percent more oil polluted the soil of Greenpoint than was spilled in the Exxon Valdez catastrophe. The spill was not detected until 1978, and cleanup efforts did not begin in earnest until 1990. The spill has left a lasting mark on the residents in the community. A 1993 New York City Health Department study found that Greenpoint had the highest rates of adult stomach cancer and childhood leukemia, along with a host of other ailments.

As vice president of his tenant council, EW was enraged that no one from National Grid had reached out to him or the residents of Cooper Park. In fact, he only learned about the Greenpoint Energy Center project a month ago. Determined to prevent history from repeating itself, he chose to fight back.

“I’m appalled that we weren’t even notified until a month ago that all this was going on,” he said in his passionate testimony. “This is something that must be stopped and must be stopped immediately.”

For Fabian Rogers, a lifelong resident of Brownsville and member of the Brownsville Residents Green Committee, the project would only exacerbate the environmental racism that already plagues his community. He believes the project is counterproductive to the needs of the neighborhood. “This monster is happening in our backyards, and it’s almost like National Grid wants us to just take it even though this pipeline shouldn’t exist when we are having conversations about a green economy.”

First begun in 2017, the North Brooklyn Pipeline (once fully operational) will pump fracked natural gas under the streets of Brownsville, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, and Williamsburg; concluding at an expanded liquefied natural gas facility in Greenpoint, located on the banks of the polluted Newtown Creek. National Grid is quick to stress that the pipeline won’t introduce additional gas into the city, but will instead improve the circulation of the city’s existing gas. According to Karen Young, media representative for National Grid, the project will meet the city’s growing energy needs and will be an overall benefit to the communities it serves.

“It’s not a pipeline, it’s a system integrity project,” said Young. “It doesn’t introduce any new gas. It ensures that the system works more safely and efficiently for all our customers.”

Thus far, National Grid is in the midst of completing the first four phases of construction, but the critical phase 5 is currently under review by the DEC. To complete phases 4 and 5 of the pipeline, National Grid has requested $185 million in rate hikes, in addition to an estimated $236 million increase in revenue the company has projected for 2021. Brooklyn residents could expect to shell out an additional $16.66 per month for utilities.

During closed-door negotiations on rate hikes last Thursday, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and a coalition of environmental groups walked out of the process, claiming that National Grid and DEC had taken “crucial” decisions out of the public view and instead doubled down on constructing fossil fuel infrastructure that endangers communities.

“With fracked gas already flowing through segments of the North Brooklyn Pipeline, it is past time to start acting on climate solutions to end the era of fossil fuel growth in New York. Our city deserves an energy system that is sustainable, affordable, and reliable,” said Stringer, also a candidate for New York City mayor, in a statement. “We can’t keep building fossil fuel infrastructure in defiance of our emissions goals and the reality of climate change. Our children and children’s children deserve better.”

In a statement, the DEC insists they have been transparent throughout the process. “DEC subjects all applications for environmental permits to a transparent and rigorous review process that encourages public input at every step.”

Despite claims to the contrary, National Grid assures that the project is safe, necessary, and equitable. “We continually invest in all our communities to ensure the system runs efficiently,” said Young. “We live and work in the communities that we serve. National Grid has been providing safe and reliable service to our customers for over 100 years and we continue to enhance our safety records.”

Yet community leaders and environmental-activist groups argue that the pipeline is far from safe, and has a disproportionate effect. It has been reported that Black people are 75 percent more likely to live near facilities that produce hazardous waste. Brooklyn is no exception. The pipeline will snake through several communities of color that have historically struggled with the effects of environmental racism.

The majority-Black neighborhood of East New York and Brownsville, for example, has the highest adult asthma rate in the city. In 2018, it was discovered that residents of a public-housing complex in Brownsville were exposed to toxic indoor air, as the complex is located adjacent to land tainted by toxic dry-cleaning chemicals and petroleum spills. Last year, Greenpoint and Williamsburg had the largest number of air-quality complaints in the entire city. The poverty rate in Greenpoint and Williamsburg hovers at 23 percent, higher than the citywide average of 17.3 percent.

Lee Ziesche believes that instead of introducing more toxic chemicals into the community, the state should invest in cleaning up toxins already polluting the community and pivot to green-energy infrastructure. It’s a goal she intends to continue to advocate for.

“You have this dangerous gas on a contaminated site on Newtown Creek, which is also incredibly vulnerable to climate change,” she said. “So what we should be doing is thinking about retiring this facility and cleaning up the area, not putting more gas there.”

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