The New York State Reliability Council filed comments with FERCearlier this week saying that the proposed Millennium Pipeline’scurrent route poses severe problems to the state’s electrical grid.

The issues arise in Millennium’s desire to use the same corridoras the Con Edison Millwood-Sprain Brook 345 kV transmission lines.The agency, which is responsible to ensure that adequatereliability standards are maintained in the New York control area,told FERC that this corridor “happens to be the most important andmost critical electric power interconnection between the major loadcenter of New York city and the rest of the easterninterconnection.” It has six 345 kV high voltage transmission linesand a total thermal capacity of 5,000 MW.

The council said that a sudden loss of these circuits, caused bya gas explosion, would pose major problems for New York Cityelectrical customers, such as a blackout. It also would endangerlarge generating plants in Southeast New York and Con Edison’sIndian Point nuclear facility.

“We recognize that a gas explosion is an event which has verylow probability,” the council told FERC. “However, the potentialconsequences of such an event could be catastrophic. In our view,the health and safety of the citizens of New York would beunacceptably jeopardized..The construction of the Millennium gaspipeline along the ConEdison corridors is likely to increase boththe possibility of occurrence and the consequences of an extremecontingency, and the currently proposed route, therefore, isunacceptable.”

The filing of these comments, however, was not an outrightopposition to the project, the council added in the statement. It justdisapproves of the current path. It is the second time a New Yorkgovernmental body opposed the pipeline’s route. Last January, the NewYork Public Service Commission asked FERC not to award the proposedMillennium Pipeline final environmental clearance until an alternateroute to an electric transmission right-of-way (ROW) in WestchesterCounty is found for the project (see Daily GPI, Jan. 26).

The $650 million Millennium Pipeline project was already in severedanger before this filing. Its main sponsor, Columbia Energy Group,was recently purchased by NiSource. Gary Neale, NiSource CEO, hasindicated that he may not fully support the project (see Daily GPI, March 6).

The 442-mile Millennium Pipeline originally was scheduled forconstruction starting in 1999, with the balance of the project tobe completed in 2000. However, the project never received apreliminary determination on non-environmental grounds from FERCand still has not received final environmental clearance. The linewas expected to begin transporting 714 MMcf/d of gas from Chicagoto the Northeast starting Nov. 1.

Columbia Gas Transmission Corp., a subsidiary of ColumbiaEnergy, is the project’s developer and largest interest holder. Thecompany also will operate the pipeline system. Other projectsponsors are TransCanada, Westcoast and MCN Energy.

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