West Village - Radon, Fracking - 11/13 Done deal?

How could we have first hand knowledge? Not a single one of those people in the video lives anywhere new New York, let alone the west village. They don't even live in C0lumbia C0unty. A good campaign would have real New Yorkers, like the people in the Roscoe bed bug commercial.

what a ridiculously poor attempt at a scare tactic. what is going to be safer? a brand new gas pipeline or the thousands of miles of ALREADY EXISTING and OLD gas pipelines?

we already have gas pipelines under the ground. they they were installed with a lot fewer regulations. those pipes are getting older. it's reasonable that as our populous grows and as pipes get older that we'll need new pipes. I don't worry one bit out this new pipeline. I'm actually very excited it's coming.

Plus what is going to be cleaner - our continued use of heating oil or the cleaner nat gas heat that landlords are converting to now? that cleaner nat gas needs to get to the boilers somehow - (asthmas rates in NYC are among the highest in the nation because of our extensive use of heating oil)

I think the real danger here is this "new" pipeline of high-pressure gas that's obviously prone to catastrophic failure (California explosion), as well as the increased radon INSIDE the gas.

Being able to light one's WATER on fire wouldn't be an issue here, since the fracking is going on elsewhere. But our signing up for this fracked gas would definitely encourage more tracking, so the folks in PA, NY state, and NJ will all be able to light their water on fire just so New Yorkers can have cheap gas.

Agree with NYCMatt, if we could limit fracking to Pennsylvania only, it would have more support.

so is your point that 8 million people should live on top of old gas pipelines because 10 years ago some mom and pop trackers screwed up and ruined the water of a few thousand people.
Isn't the best solution to enforce better regulations on fracking? Isn't is smarter to have more and newer gas lines in NYC?

"that's obviously prone to catastrophic failure" and these new lines are "prone" to catastrophic failure let alone "obviously prone" - Millions of miles of gas lines exist all over the world, they certainly aren't "prone" to "catastrophic failure" even in the less regulated countries.

I'll recant the "mom and pop" statement as I'm not sure that all fracking problems were caused by smaller operations. My point is that better regulations can make it safe.

What we really need to be concerned about is dihydrogen monoxide. That's killed a hell of a lot more people than natural gas, and not surprisingly, Bloomberg doesn't appear to have a care in the world that miles of pipes full of the stuff are under Manhattan right now.

Amen, flarf. And it kills our most vulnerable in the greatest numbers: little bitty babies, and slippage-prone old ladies.

Eradicate dihydrogen monoxide now!

Stop the oppression! What do we want? When do we want it!

Sign the petition!

Flarf your epidermis is showing.

Yes I survived despite being repeatedly exposed to it during my childhood through rusty garden hoses.

greenberg, just a reminder: this is a family New York residential real estate discussion board. Let's try to keep it that way.

Though now that I think about it, those hoses weren't made in china at the time.

I attended a course about this a year ago. Yes, this is scheduled to happen. There will be a large pipeline going through lower Manhattan, as well as methane barges sailing through NY harbor. The instructors said that if fracking is approved for upstate NY, there will be a very large cost to NYC tazpayers to protect our reservoirs. It was a big number, but I can't remember exactly how much. Amazing that we are still discussing this instead of alternative energy sources.

There is no such thing as alternative energy sources. You can't get an alternative energy pipe or wire from ConEd. But it sure sounds nice.

this is one of the single biggest threats against the health of NYC residents. don't drink the kool aid! it is reprehensible they way they are trying to ram it through and the corruption behind the scenes is just unbelievable. city agencies are having to wage massive lawsuits to try to stop the madness. this will ABSOLUTELY affect property value in the west vil. it's simply terrifying how far it's already gone.

glamma - your comment is ridiculous and we know it. Pollution from heating oil is killing us. Nat gas kills us slower. We should use nat gas. And there are already millions of stoves in NYC hooked up to nat gas - it's absurd to think that a gas pipeline will lower property values. Gas pipelines never have and they never will.

It's a little late to be getting hysterical about the pipeline. Or about any of the existing pipelines.

http://www.spectraenergy.com/Operations/New-Projects-and-Our-Process/New-Projects-in-US/New-Jersey-New-York-Pipeline/

The work in the West Village is scheduled to be done by July. Shouldn't there be pictures of damage by now?

>It's a little late to be getting hysterical about the pipeline. Or about any of the existing pipelines.

It's one of the worst PR or grassroots campaigns I've seen.

what would be a better campaign?

C0C0, are you pro or anti-West Village?

SE, why?

You asked a question, but now you want to change the subject. Typical of a fraudster.

SE, why?

What's your connection to radon?

SE, why?

Alternative idea: pipeline from C0lumbia C0unty, NY to the West Village: http://www.mapquest.com/embed?hk=ZG85ea

SE, why?

So you'd rather keep your radon in C0lumbia C0unty?

SE, why?

Stay focused on the radon C0C0.

SE, why?

Come on C0C0, you, radon, asbestos ... what's the connection?

SE, why?

why are you avoiding your topic?

SE, why?

typical C0lumbia C0unty.

SE, why?

Another interesting thread, completely ruined by trUth.

The course I took last year was given by the NYC Law Dept. I took the course because our local community board was considering hydrofracking and Spectra's proposal and I wanted to bring some facts to what had become an emotionally-charged debate based on assumptions, not unlike the one above. I went back and looked at the course materials last night to remember some of the facts. Unfortunately, few people may read down this far in the thread because it has already been hijacked for other purposes.

I learned last year that this type of high-pressure gas pipe is different from the ones we already have underground. It is 30 inches wide, the walls of the pipe are half an inch thick, and the gas is under high pressure for a long distance. These wide high pressure pipes have blown up in other places in the U.S., causing damage. NYC is the highest density location Spectra has used for a high pressure pipe location. The original plan was to extend the pipeline from lower Manhattan through parts of Brooklyn and Queens but I haven't looked recently to see if that is still going to happen.

The regulations mentioned by a previous poster for allowing older gas lines to be built underground were completely different, amd the types of pipelines are completely different, so it's like comparing apples and oranges.

The standards for environmental review of large high-pressure gas pipelines by the U.S. government are not rigorous and are focused more on plants and animals than on the lives and property of humans. Federal regulators assessed this project (if you can call their EIS an assessment) because it is an interstate project.

Spectra Energy, despite the cheery message on its website, does not have an excellent record of safety or oversight when it comes to its large high-pressure gas lines. And then there's those methane barges in NY harbor that no one is mentioning.

Maybe we'll all get lucky. Or maybe we will need to have part of southern Manhattan or Jersey City blow up -- or maybe someone will have to hijack a methane barge for political purposes -- before we start thinking about why we are not investing in energy sources other than the ones that make billions for the oil and gas industry.

In that course I took, I also learned about the many dangers and high costs of hydrofracking to NYC residents. If you think that better regulations are going to make either hydrofracking or the Spectra pipeline safer, you're going to have to wait until we have a different systen of campaign financing. Until then, our politicians will continue to sell out to the energy industry.

I left the course that day feeling alarmed and depressed. I understood that this project is not as safe as Spectra would like you to think and that hydrofracking would not be beneficial to the vast majority of people in New York State. I also understood that neither hydrofracking nor the Spectra project are going away. That's because the potential profits trump your safety and mine. a pig in liptstick and a ballgown is still a pig. (No offense to pigs, who are generally more honest and likeable than many of our politicans and energy executives.)

>Unfortunately, few people may read down this far in the thread because it has already been hijacked for other purposes.

Those darn terrorists.

>or maybe someone will have to hijack a methane barge for political purposes

Seriously?

>why we are not investing in energy sources other than the ones that make billions for the oil and gas industry.

Such as?

>Until then, our politicians will continue to sell out to the energy industry.

>I left the course that day feeling alarmed and depressed. I understood that this project is not as safe as Spectra would like you to think and that hydrofracking would not be beneficial to the vast majority of people in New York State. I also understood that neither hydrofracking nor the Spectra project are going away. That's because the potential profits trump your safety and mine. a pig in liptstick and a ballgown is still a pig. (No offense to pigs, who are generally more honest and likeable than many of our politicans and energy executives.)

Are you living in a cave or under a rock? With a pig?
We need energy. Energy companies supply energy.

"Alternative energy" for which you have provided no specificity is not going to meet our needs. And to get the "politicians and energy executives" ... are you suggesting they put more effort into Solyndra? What exactly are you proposing? You don't even like people in NYC riding bicycles.

"why we are not investing in energy sources other than the ones that make billions for the oil and gas industry.

Such as?"

****

Hemp oil.

NYCMatt: Hemp oil is hardly a productive enough fuel source in the quantities required - and it is only effective as a gasoline alternative, which has nothing to do with using natural gas instead of oil to heat homes and business, and operate industry.

The ethanol base extracted from cannibas (as with corn) costs far more than gasoline to produce AND is significantly less efficient. As an aside, in addition, with corn, you're using a food crop to produce fuel - we might as well go back to horse and buggy.

No, matsonjones ... Hydrogen-Engineered Massive Particles. HEMP. Hemp oil.

>in addition, with corn, you're using a food crop to produce fuel - we might as well go back to horse and buggy.

How will the corn be grown?

"we might as well go back to horse and buggy."

Maybe we should.

>Maybe we should.

Nothing is stopping you from getting a horse and buggy.

SE why?

"we might as well go back to horse and buggy."

... then we'd be no better than a Pennsylvanian.

sorry, but to think there is anything "safe" about fracking is just insane (and we know it). trying reading a little about the havoc it's already wreaked and the dangers associated with it (particularly, risk of ENORMOUS, MILE WIDE SPONTANEOUS EXPLOSIONS, wouldn't that be nice in the middle of a school day in the west village).
we should all be protesting this like crazy.

and yes of course we should be cooking with gas, just not FRACKED gas! learn the difference - it's literally a matter of life and death.

Fear mongerer.

"wouldn't that be nice in the middle of a school day in the west village"

As opposed to a Saturday or Sunday, when it would presumably be not as bad?

Everyone's in the country on weekends.

You mean the Hamptons riff-raff?

Among other places. And don't call me riff-raff. And learn to use commas.

Hair shirts anyone?

If you live in NYC, if you have an iphone, a 40 (to 60?0" TV, Xboxes, plug-in cars. If you are pro internet and tech jobs, if you are pro the new engineering school on Roosevelt island, CAT scans and having a Google headquarters in Manhattan. If you make your money off of the high frequency trading in Mid-town or if you believe in mass-transit; If you are for all these things then you are pro energy.

If you are pro NY energy then you believe we need to have more natural gas. I don't care what you actually say about it, you are for it. There are no alternative sources of energy that can supply NYC with the power it needs. If you say wind farms or solar, then please first ask for permission from those people where you will put these energy producing facilities, but also realize you are bad at math. They just CAN"T produce the kinds of energy needed by NYC. If you are against natural gas then BEG the government to allow Entergy to continue to use and to expand Indian Point, because nuclear energy is your only viable clean alternative.

OR - if you don't want to do the math but still want to stop using Nuclear and natural gas, please hand over your A/C, your plug-in cars, your Google HQ's and the rest of your technology because you won't be able to economically power them.

1. Plenty of NYS valleys to dam up for electricity.
2. Plenty of valleys in other states to dam up for NY electricity.
3. Lots and lots and lots of ocean for wind farms, Commie Kennedy Clan be damned.
4. Focus on energy-use reduction. Plenty of achievement, plenty more available.
5. NYC has a tiny carbon footprint per capita, so no burden should be on us. Muck up Hummer country instead.

1. Plenty of NYS valleys to dam up for electricity.
2. Plenty of valleys in other states to dam up for NY electricity.
3. Lots and lots and lots of ocean for wind farms, Commie Kennedy Clan be damned.
4. Focus on energy-use reduction. Plenty of achievement, plenty more available.
5. NYC has a tiny carbon footprint per capita, so no burden should be on us. Muck up Hummer country instead.

1. Plenty of NYS valleys to dam up for electricity.

Environmental impacts anyone? Even if you COULD get this idea to work instead of other techs you have to remember that between the environmental impact statements and the planning process and the challenges it is probably at least 20 years from planning to completion.

2. Plenty of valleys in other states to dam up for NY electricity.

More to the point, a "valley" is not the ideal for a damn, a canyon is. That greateaste damn we could build today would be at the mouth of the Grand Canyon. Do you think that is about to happen?

3. Lots and lots and lots of ocean for wind farms, Commie Kennedy Clan be damned.

Ocean wind farms are proving to be quite a bit more challenging than expected. First of all you will again deal with a decade or more of impact statements and environmental challenges. Wind farms are proving to be both not as long lasting as previously thought and more environmentally cahllenging. (seems when a twenty year old windmill stops producing sooner than its 30 year expected life what you have is a big concrete foundationed pole in the ground with an oil and heavy metal leaking rusting motor at the top of it ruining the skyline.) And the powerful rich with their ocean views from their beachfront villas aren't going away soon.

4. Focus on energy-use reduction. Plenty of achievement, plenty more available.

As much as we do this our consumption has still increased. And we keep reducing our options (as a city) of available resources. When and if Indian Point closes it will leave a big gap in available resources. We no longer allow new powerlines like the line from CT to Long Island that could never be laid across LI Sounds. NYC has to generate its own electricity and that can only reasonably come from gas.

And though our computers are becoming small and more powerful, they are becoming more energy hungry. That is why a laptop, after 20 years of improved battery technology, still only lasts 2 hours. Our phones with better batteries last less time too. Our air conditioners, with improved efficiency, still use the same power because the efficiencies are used to reduce the amount of expensive copper used in each unit. Our new homes are glass fishbowls that need to have all the sunlight induced heat removed by A/C. Our future plug-in cars will be HUGE energy hogs (you still have to move the extra 500-700 pds of battery using some sort of energy).

All these efficiencies and yet our per capita consumption continues to rise.

5. NYC has a tiny carbon footprint per capita, so no burden should be on us. Muck up Hummer country instead.

And they can tell you to go F yourself. It is their valleys and oceans you want to use. They chose instead to go with the 70 year old technology of fracing and its lower physical footprint and greater riches than the newer and supposedly cleaner but more expensive and much less reliable technologies that would muck up their environment. So maybe it is us urbanites who sould "muck up", or do without. And they have contributed, with their natural gas, more to the reduction of the planets carbon footprint than all of Europe's "renewable" technology combined.

+1

AvUWS>> More to the point, a "valley" is not the ideal for a damn, a canyon is. That greateaste damn we could build today would be at the mouth of the Grand Canyon. Do you think that is about to happen?

Not to take away from anything else you said, but it isn't going to happen because it'd be silly. There's already a dam a short 15 miles upstream from the mouth (Glen Canyon Dam), and at the tail end is Lake Mead, the reservoir formed by the downstream Hoover Dam.

Still, you have to admit that damming the entire Grand Canyon would be superawesome!

Solar, wind, and most importantly TIDAL.
Do you know how much of the dialogue and misinformation is being shaped by the dirty energy industry themselves?
Yes, I am trying to instill fear in people so that they WAKE UP and protect themselves before we are all duck soup.
Seriously, do some reading.

But by the time the propaganda perks down to people who state the "reality" that prevents any change from fossil/nuclear, it becomes very easy to imagine the protests against tire-clad wheels ... how the numbers clearly state that we'll always need wagon wheels, so there's no reason to invest in anything else.

Tidal? Still not about to happen. One of the most ideal locations for tidal happens to also be in proximity to its market. The East river (not really a river) has huge currents and is right in the heart of NY. But there are mutliple problems. A long test run has not yet been successful because this is HARD. The mechanicals aren't yet working. the turbines would break. Saltwater is remarkably corrosive. And once you get it all up and running it still won't provide power during slack tide. (And if you don't know what slack tide is then don't even embarrass yourself by talking about tidal energy.)

I believe in new technology. I hope (and hoped) the East river experiment would work. But we aren't there yet. I also beleive wholeheartedly in nuclear. You have to know Nuclear techs to understand how much safer and less damaging to the environment it is than all the renewable technologies. Indian Point is way safer than Fukushima was, but it is very old. A new plant designed today (and after Fukushima) would be orders of magnitude safer. If you cared about carbon footprints you would be pro nuclear.

If you would rather harness excersize bikes and solar to the NY power grid and you believe that will solve things then you are just bad at math.

The Grand Canyon is absolutely a viable location. Glen Canyon USED to be a Canyon. Now it is a lake. The Grand Canyon would be a bigger lake than Lake Mead, or Lake Powell. But it isn't going to happen nor should it. You would save some fracking wellheads by erasing thousands of square miles of unreplaceable national park?

I've been to the Grand Canyon. It's a pit!

There's still no viable, even slightly safe solution for nuclear waste storage ... even its transportation is a nightmare. I'll buy into nuclear when there simply is no waste ... when it can be neutralized completely onsite. Until then, the slight percentage reduction in a meltdown versus older technologies is of little comfort. The "yes, the old one was bad but the new one is good" storyline that the nuclear construction industry pitches is remarkably like that of Big Pharma's perpetual "wonderdrug" pitch (albeit without the patent timeline, presumably).

Necessity is the mother of invention ... a good kick in the pants and massive infusion of military dollars and all these solar/wind/tide/microorganism solutions will work themselves to the forefront pronto.

"Necessity is the mother of invention ... a good kick in the pants and massive infusion of military dollars and all these solar/wind/tide/microorganism solutions will work themselves to the forefront pronto."

The math just isn't there. You can't change that, not even with defense dept. type spending. Even with the huge drop in PV prices due to lack of (exorbitant and untenable) subsidies hasn't changed the calculation. Not just are wind and solar not economical, they leave huge footprints (tens if not hundreds of poles are necessary for wind and acres of solar coverage to replace one gas wellhead), they last less time than was thought or projected, and when they are no longer usefull they hang around leaving large rusting fields of equipment. And even were all of this to not be the case, they are unproductive at precisely the times you need their energy, like those stale "hazy hot and humid" days when people will be running their A/C's and the load factors reach the high 90's (or more).

More to the point, even if all the economies were there and you could put these vast fields of long lasting and cheap wind turbines and solar cells (three variables that just aren't true today) somewhere, you would still have to get powerlines from there to here, something that hasn't been politically feasible in decades and part of the reason ConEd keeps building gas generating plants and why the gas pipeline in the OP is being built in the first place. Money won't change the physics and it won't change the politics. It is merely a dream of the numerically weak to say that if we spent enough our bogeymen will disappear. The Manhattan project and the Aollo program are alwasy referenced, but both were finite and well defined goals and pretty small by physical requirements. Since they were already at the edge of current technology and $ were used not to solve the problems but to complete the engineering quickly. Here we still haven't even solved the physics of the energy bottlenecks.

I have been to the GC too. Paddled for 5 days from Glen Canyon damn to the bottom of South Rima and hiked up. It is gorgeous. And I wouldn't want to change that unless truly extenuating circumstances were necessary. Since all this shale gas and oil is available that is not the case.

Nuclear - We DO have a safe alternative. Yucca mountain. Geologically stable, no aquifers at risk, and very very remote. Transporting waste there with todays tech is probably safer than transporting all the coal currently transported via rail due to lack of a Keystone pipeline. But since Harry Reid's re-election depends on his being against YM we won't be getting it any time soon.

And as to safety - No one has as yet died even from the Fukushima radiation, and that plant was, by US standards, designed and run in a criminally negligent style.

Today's designs are not in percentages "slightly" safer but orders of magnitude safer. True, if there was a 99.99% chance of meltdown and that is taken down to a 6th Standard Deviation the % is still less than .01 points, but .01 to .00034 is a 3000% improvement. Todays designs don't even rely on multiple cooling redundancies, they don't run without positive effort, so in an emergency they shut down. The most advnaced designs we have in operation today were designed in the 60's. They have more modern emergency and redundancies, but imagine what we could design today!

>And as to safety - No one has as yet died even from the Fukushima radiation,

The most scary thing about radiation is that it affects the next generation more than the current generation.

Do you ever care about how ignorant you are? The concern about radiation is the strength and the duration. The reason nuclear accidents and explosions pose dangers is because they also irradiate matter that we may then ingest and that might accumulate in our systems increasing the strength and or duration. Low levels, even for long periods of time, do not pose a problem. Do you know how we know that? Because we have copious history of this happening, and not from nuclear accidents or explosions, but from X-ray equipment, commercial flying, and normal background radiation. Contamination, and ingested contaminated material, are the concerns in accidents, and whether they are cesium or iodine isotopes, (etc.)

Iodine, for example, is easily ingested, and we know it will accumulate in the thyroid, but it has a half life of only 4 days, and should exposure lead to thyroid cancer we know how to treat it early. But we know how to track these things and to avoid them when necessary. To say that the effect is on future generations means you are getting your information from movies and not science. We are constantly exposed to radiation. If you live in a town near Fukushima your additional exposure (3.5 micro sieverts), every day, is less than the additional exposure from an LA/NY commerical airline flight (40 micro sieverts).
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/radiation.png

I am a complete noob with regards to nuclear effects. But I have read enough from expert sources to know when the knowledge regarding nuclear effects is based on reality or just plain ignorant fear.

>Nuclear - We DO have a safe alternative. Yucca mountain. Geologically stable, no aquifers at risk, and very very remote. Transporting waste there with todays tech is probably safer than transporting all the coal currently transported via rail due to lack of a Keystone pipeline. But since Harry Reid's re-election depends on his being against YM we won't be getting it any time soon.

Basically sweep it under the rug. Next we'll be shipping it in rockets aimed at the sun.

Fukushima is still leaking contaminated water 75 gallons per minute.
Would you even eat twinkies, a product that could probably last as long as an egyptian mummy if it were produced in a plant anywhere near Japan?
Japan is much better at scrubbing their news then we are. Fukushima isnt even the first incident. A 2007 quake saw radioactive material spill into the Sea of Japan. Nobody really knows to what extent. How long have been having this dying shark problem?
And how about the europeans, their Yucca mountain is off the coast of Africa, the Yucky Sea.

I wonder what exactly is more damaging to our environment, CO2 or stronium?

What's more dangerous, ignorant fear or just ignorance?

Sorry, keep looking for cold fusion or the like before expanding the madness, at least wait until we've colonized space.

another thing, every chef and restaurant owner in the city should be protesting the sh*t out of spectra or ANY fracking in new york. we have had the BEST water in the country for decades because we bring it in from the catskill mountains. the quality affects the taste of food. if this sh*t goes, through, we are F*CKED. it will only be a matter of time until our water supply is destroyed or at best, seriously compromsied.
Water all over the world is becoming scarce. They are desperatley trying to privatize the supply all over the globe.
ps - i hear they estimate that a million people in CALIFORNIA alone will develop fukushima-related cancer.

let's just say i don't eat food from japan anymore.

I agree that fracking should not occur in NYS and should be in places like PA and OH.

More Better Living Through "New Fossil Fuel" Extraction:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/business/energy-environment/mountain-of-petroleum-coke-from-oil-sands-rises-in-detroit.html

"Koch coke" should remain a joke about their children's recreational habits, and that's all it should be.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/sirr/html/report/report.shtml

SE,why?

Spectra Pipeline In NYC Approved By Federal Government To Start Natural Gas Pumping
Oct 21, 2013
By Mathew Katz

CHELSEA — A pipeline under the West Village and Chelsea has won federal government approval to start pumping natural gas, prompting an outcry from residents and opponents who fear the project could cause an explosion and environmental contamination.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted permission last Thursday for the pipeline, built by Texas-based Spectra Energy, to be put into service on Nov. 1, according to a letter from commission director Lauren O'Donnell.

The companies behind the pipeline have "adequately stabilized areas disturbed by construction" and "restoration is proceeding satisfactorily," O'Donnell wrote.

However, residents have raised safety concerns about the pipeline, which will pump about 800 million cubic feet of Marcellus Shale natural gas into the city each day. The pipeline stretches from New Jersey under the Hudson River and enters Manhattan at 10th Avenue and Gansevoort Street, stretching up to 15th Street.

"It's so disappointing," Bill Borock, president of the Council of Chelsea Block Associations. "The gas companies say don't worry, but we don't have any assurances when big weather and flooding happens."

Residents and advocates said they are particularly worried that an explosion could occur if the pipeline, running beneath a densely populated area, is damaged.

The Sane Energy Project, an opposition group, slammed the pipeline's opening, citing fears of radon, a chemical element found in Marcellus Shale gas that can cause lung cancer.

"As supplies of gas from other sources runs out, a larger and larger percentage of the gas supplied to NYC will come from Marcellus sources," the organization wrote in an email to members.

The group held a rally outside of Chelsea Piers on Saturday, in the hopes of convincing officials to shut down the project.

Marylee Hanley, a Spectra spokeswoman, said that locals had little to worry about.

"Spectra Energy has been operating safely in the region for more than 60 years," she said. "The New York-New Jersey Expansion Project was built to meet or exceed all federal safety requirements and regulations."

The gas, which will travel 20 miles from a plant in Linden, N.J. into the city, will provide enough energy to heat about 2 million homes, Hanley said.

Con Edison, which will be distributing the gas to its Manhattan customers, directed questions about the pipeline to Spectra.

For Borock, the danger was not just immediate — he also pointed out that west Chelsea could see millions of square feet of new development.

With Hudson River Park set to sell its air rights, the area immediately around the pipeline could see increased development in the coming years — leaving more people vulnerable to a potential explosion, Borock said.

"You'll have more people living there, and God forbid something happens," he said.

Radon is an invisible, odorless and tasteless gas that is a naturally occurring byproduct of uranium. Radon is classified as a Type A carcinogen, the most potent category of cancer-causing agents according to the Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CERTI). There is known safe level of radon exposure, stresses the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and risk increases with prolonged exposure, reports University of Minnesota Environmental Health Sciences (ENHS).

Radon levels become elevated in indoor environments, and inhalation of radon has been proven to cause lung cancer. According to ENHS, radon exposure is also associated with other respiratory conditions such as emphysema.

Types of lung cancers associated with radon exposure include adenocarcinoma, large cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and small cell carcinoma. The EPA reports, radon is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers and the second-leading cause of lung cancer overall. Radon combined with cigarette smoking increases cancer risk.

Radon gas decays quickly and its decay products stick to lung tissue, exposing the lungs to radiation. The radiation destroys lung cells and causes genetic mutations that can lead to cancer reports CERTI.

Long-term radon exposure has been linked to the development of emphysema, chronic interstitial pneumonia, pulmonary fibrosis and respiratory lesions, according to ENHS. Emphysema is a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The air sacs in the lung can become damaged by radon gas, depriving the body of oxygen.

Radon gas exposure results in mutations of chromosomes. It is a genotoxic substance, meaning that it may damage DNA in ways that can lead to cancer and may have other unknown long-term effects. Radon gas is also teratogenic, reports ENHS; it may disturb the development of an embryo or fetus, end a pregnancy or cause birth defects. Best way to Detect the radon is you need to get detector like which i found https://beonhome.com/best-radon-detector/