By Gabriela Resto-Montero
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
GREENWICH VILLAGE — Planners of a project to run a natural gas line from New Jersey to New York that will go through part of the West Village will officially submit their application Dec. 20.
Representatives from Spectra Energy, the firm which will build the 30 inch pipe that will run for 20 miles between New Jersey and New York, met with Community Board 2 Thursday to discuss safety concerns before submitting their preliminary application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
"It's clearly going to stir things up for us," said Jason Mansfield, chair of the board's Environment, Public Safety and Public Health committee.
"We really want to be kept informed and expect that they will be willing to work with us to keep their disruptions to a minimum," Mansfield said.
The pipe would come up from the riverbed at Gansevoort Peninsula then underneath the Route 9A bike path at the Hudson River Park, north through 10th Avenue to 15th Street where it would connect with a ConEd line, officials said at the meeting.
The project will take approximately four months to complete on the New York side and begin transmitting natural gas to the city as early as the fall of 2013.
Creating the infrastructure to transmit natural gas instead of fuel-based oil was one of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's goals for his PlaNYC 2030 guidelines, wrote Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith in a letter to Jon Wellinghoff, chair of the regulatory commission.
"The pipeline would directly supply substantial additional natural gas volume into Manhattan, where it will be critically needed in the coming years," Goldsmith wrote.
"And it will do so using the most efficient and clean-burning fossil fuel available," he said.
Community members asked that Spectra investigate the safest depth for the pipeline below the bike path and to also look into automatic valve shut-offs in case of emergency, for their proposal.
